G: Galloway through Grimes

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

GALLOWAY, Samuel, 1811-1872, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, Ohio, educator, opponent of slavery. When the question of slavery began to agitate the country, Galloway allied himself with the anti-slavery men, although he preferred working within the Whig party to joining any of the avowedly anti-slavery political parties. In 1854 he was elected to Congress, where he added to his reputation as an orator.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 219; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 582; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 117)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 17:

GALLOWAY, SAMUEL (March 22, 1811-April 5, 1872), educator, congressman, was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. The first Galloway came to America from Northern Ireland and settled in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and about the same time the Buchanans, another Scotch-Irish family, settled in the same neighborhood. James Galloway, the father of Samuel, married a Buchanan. Galloway received his early education in Gettysburg, but when he was seventeen or eighteen years old, upon the death of his father, he moved to Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio. In 1829 he entered Miami University, from which institution he graduated four years later at the head of his class. He then began the study of law at Hillsboro, Ohio, but abruptly abandoned his legal studies to enter Princeton Theological Seminary as a student. He remained only a year (1836) at Princeton and then, possibly on account of financial difficulties, began teaching. He was appointed professor of Greek in his alma mater, but ill health compelled him to resign within a year. Upon his recovery, he resumed his teaching, first in Hamilton, Ohio, then at Miami University, 1837-38, and later as professor of classical languages at Hanover College, Hanover, Ind., 1838-40. During this period he was in great demand as a lecturer upon education and temperance. He was by nature deeply religious and for many years was undecided whether to select the ministry or the law for his life-work. In 1841, however, he decided to return to Ohio and resume his study of law. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and the following year formed a partnership with Nathaniel Massie at Chillicothe. His analytical mind, sound logic, careful preparation, and clear and forcible delivery soon brought him recognition. In 1843 he was married to Joan Wall in of Cincinnati and in the same year was elected secretary of state; in 1844 he moved to Columbus. As secretary of state (1844-50) he was ex-officio superintendent of schools. Because of his Calvinistic educational traditions and his association with Horace Mami and Calvin E. Stowe [qq.v.], he became an enthusiastic advocate of popular education. His reports to the legislature dwelt upon the deplorable condition of the common schools in Ohio and embodied many valuable suggestions looking toward reform. Through Galloway's efforts the standard of teaching in the state was raised; teachers' institutes were organized; district and county superintendents were appointed to supervise the work; educators were inspired with new vigor, and the public was awakened to the needs of education. Within ten years the school system of Ohio was completely reconstructed.

When the question of slavery began to agitate the country, Galloway allied himself with the anti-slavery men, although he preferred working within the Whig party to joining any of the avowedly anti-slavery political parties. In 1854 he was elected to Congress, where he added to his reputation as an orator. A trenchant address on Kansas (March I7, 1856; Congressional Globe, 34 Congress, I Session, App., pp. 210-12), was highly commended for its keen satire and vigorous argument at home and abroad, but Galloway was defeated for reelection by Samuel S. Cox [q.v.]. He thereupon resumed his legal practise and took an active interest in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church. During the Civil War he was in close relations with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, both of whom frequently consulted him. He was appointed judge advocate of Camp Chase, the only federal office he ever held. After the war he practised law, and in 1871 his name was suggested for the governorship. His failure to receive the nomination, which went to Rutherford B. Hayes, was a keen disappointment to him. He died the following year, in Columbus.

[Washington Gladden, in Ohio Archaeology and History Pubs., IV (1895), 263-78; Wm. A. Taylor, Centennial History of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio (1909); A History of Educ. in Ohio (1876), published by the Ohio General Assembly; J. J. Burns, Educ. History of Ohio (1905), p. 410; Chas. Robinson, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio in the Nineteenth Century (1876); Princeton Theological Seminary Biographical Catalog (1909); obituaries in Cincinnati Times and Chronicle and Cincinnati Commercial, April 6, 1872, and in American Educ. Monthly, March 1873.]

R.C.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 582:

GALLOWAY, Samuel, lawyer, born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 20 March, 1811; died in Columbus, Ohio, 5 April, 1872. He was of Scotch-Irish parentage. After removing to Ohio in 1819, he was graduated at Miami in 1833, at the head of his class, and in the following year taught a classical school at Hamilton, Ohio. In 1835 he was elected professor of ancient languages in Miami, but resigned in consequence of ill health in 1836. He resumed teaching in 1838, first at Springfield, Ohio, and later as professor of ancient languages at South Hanover college, Indiana. In 1841 he returned to Ohio, where he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1842. He practised in Chillicothe, Ohio, until1844, when he was elected to be secretary of state and removed to Columbus. He held this office for eight years, and after declining a re-election resumed his profession. In 1854 he was elected to congress as a Republican and served one term. He was defeated by S. S. Cox in 1856, and again in 1858. Mr. Galloway took an active part in the political conflicts arising out of the Kansas question. He rendered important legal services to the war department during the civil war. He was active in religious matters, and was for thirteen years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 582.



GAMBLE, Hamilton Rowan, 1798-1864, lawyer, political leader. Member of the American Colonization Society. Governor and Secretary of State of Missouri. Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice (Whig Party). Dissented in Missouri Supreme Court decision of “Dred Scott v. Emerson” case, 16th Governor of Missouri, 1861-1864.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 587; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 120; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 670)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 587:

GAMBLE, Hamilton Rowan, governor of Missouri, born in Winchester, Virginia, 29 November, 1798; died in Jefferson City, Missouri, 31 January, 1864. His education was received principally at Hampden Sidney, and when about eighteen years of age he was admitted to the Bar of Virginia. In 1818 he went to Missouri, and resided several years in Franklin, Howard County. He was elected secretary of state in 1824, which office he held one year. He then became a successful lawyer in St. Louis, served on the bench from 1851 till 1855, and was presiding judge of the supreme court of Missouri. At one time he was a member of the state house of representatives. In 1861 he was elected to the state constitutional convention, which body appointed him provisional governor of Missouri, the regular governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, having joined the secession party. He held this office until his death. In the state convention of 1861, as chairman of the committee on Federal relations, Governor Gamble made a report expressing a hope for an amicable adjustment of the existing difficulties without Civil War. He pronounced the president's call for troops unconstitutional, and appealed to the legislature to unite for the preservation of the state. Later the governor was authorized to receive a loan of $500,000 and to purchase ammunition, and the state military was put under his command, On 12 June, 1861, he issued a proclamation calling into service 50,000 of the state militia " for the purpose of repelling invasion, and for the protection of the lives, liberty, and property of the citizens." On 12 June, 1862, the state convention passed a resolution expressing confidence in the integrity and patriotism of the governor and state officers. On 13 June he submitted a message to the convention, declaring that he would furnish aid to any state that would adopt a measure of emancipation. On 22 July, Governor Gamble summoned the militia to defend the state against Confederate guerillas. He called the adjourned state convention to reassemble in June, 1863, to consult and act on the subject of emancipation, and, after expressing a desire for peace, offered his resignation, which was not accepted. Governor Gamble in 1838 organized the 2d Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 587.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 120:

GAMBLE, HAMILTON ROWAN (November 29, 1798-January 31, 1864), lawyer, judge, governor, was born in Winchester, Virginia, the son of Irish immigrants, Joseph Gamble and Anne Hamilton. He was educated at Hampden-Sidney College. Admitted to the Virginia bar at eighteen, he followed the familiar course westward, arriving in the Territory of Missouri in 1818. After successful administration of a judicial office, he served as secretary of state, but retired to devote his entire time and attention to his profession. He was a recognized authority in important land and title suits, and had extensive practise before the state and federal appellate courts. In 1827 he was married to Caroline J. Coalter. Reentering politics in 1846, he served one term in the legislature, refusing a second term. The Whig state convention of 1850, however, insisted upon nominating him for the supreme bench, and he was elected by a large majority in a Democratic state (Missouri Statesman, September 26, 1851). From 1851 to 1854 he served as the presiding justice, his opinions being marked by brevity, learning, and conservatism. In the case of Scott, a Man of Color vs. Emerson (1852; l 5 Missouri, 576)' Dred Scott's first unsuccessful suit for freedom, he rendered a dissenting opinion, holding that "a master who takes his slave to reside in a State or Territory where slavery is prohibited, thereby emancipates his slave" (Ibid., p. 590). This view was in accord with eight earlier Missouri precedents. In 1854 he resigned because of ill health and definitely retired from political and professional life, removing to Norristown, near Philadelphia. Early in 1861, the political situation became so critical in Missouri that Gamble returned to that state and declared that "going out of the Union would be the most ruinous thing Missouri could do." He was elected in February a member of the state convention, called to consider the relation of the state to the Union. In this body he was the leader of the Conditional Unionists, those who favored compromise and who refused to pledge the state to secession. He was chairman of the committee on federal relations, whose report declaring that “there is at present no adequate cause to impel Missouri to dissolve her connection with the Federal Union" was adopted by the convention. In June 1861, upon the flight of the secessionist state officials, the convention assumed constituent powers, declared vacant the administrative and legislative offices, and selected Gamble as provisional governor. He organized two separate forces of the militia and secured from the Lincoln administration money and equipment to sustain them. Despite the dangerous conflicts of opinion over military policy, he was able in 1863 truthfully to say that no successful invasion of the state had occurred and that lawlessness and disorder had been materially reduced. He was unable, however, to solve the most difficult problem with which the provisional government had to deal, that of emancipation. By the end of 1862 the Unionist party in Missouri had divided into two bitterly hostile factions which respectively advocated and opposed the immediate abolition of slavery. Gamble, essentially conservative, in his message of December 30, 1862, discussed in general terms a plan for gradual, compensated emancipation which he recommended to the consideration of the legislature (Journal of the Senate of Missouri, 22 General Assembly, 1 Session, p. 24). When in the following year the convention adopted a gradual emancipation plan, the Radicals, open in their opposition to Gamble, denounced it and demanded the Governor's resignation. He was willing to resign, but would not be forced out of office, and he was supported by men of moderate views. His health had long been frail, and in January 1864, after a short illness, he died. Despite obvious mistakes, his administration of the provisional government had succeeded in its chief objectives. The supremacy of the federal government had been maintained in Missouri; the state had been saved for the Union; free labor had definitely triumphed over slavery.

[In Memoriam: Hamilton R. Gamble (1864); Missouri History Review, October 1910; The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri, Volume III (1922); Journal and Proc. Missouri State Convention (5 volumes, 1861- 63); obituaries in Missouri Republican (St. Louis), February 1, 2, 1864.]

T.S.B.



GATES, Seth Merrill, 1800-1877, abolitionist leader, lawyer, newspaper editor, U.S. Congressman, Whig Party, Western New York. Anti-slavery political leader in House of Representatives. In 1848 Gates was the Free-Soil candidate for lieutenant-governor of New York, but was not elected. He wrote the protest of the Whig members of Congress in 1843 against the proposed annexation of Texas.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 295; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 128; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 104; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 615-616; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

GATES, Seth Merrill, lawyer, born in Winfield, Herkimer County, New York, 16 October, 1800; died in Warsaw, New York, 24 August, 1877. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1827, and began practice in Le Roy. He was elected to the state legislature in 1832, but declined a re-election. During this session he was instrumental in procuring a charter for the first Railroad in western New York, being a portion of the present New York Central. In 1838 he purchased the " Le Roy Gazette," which he edited for several years. He was elected to Congress in 1838, and re-elected in 1840. On the expiration of his Congressional service, he moved to Warsaw, and continued his law-practice. On account of his hostility to slavery, a reward of $500 was offered by a southern planter for his "delivery in Savannah, dead or alive." In 1848 he was the Free-Soil candidate for lieutenant-governor of New York, but was defeated. He drew up the protest of the Whig members of Congress in 1843 against the annexation of Texas, erroneously attributed in several histories to Mr. Adams's pen; and the correspondence between Mr. Gates and ex-President John Quincy Adams, who signed the protest, is still in the possession of his son. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 615-616.



GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, 1795-1865, lawyer, statesman, anti-slavery U.S. Congressman, Northern Whig from Ohio, elected in 1838. First abolitionist elected to House of Representatives. Worked to eliminate “gag rule,” which prohibited anti-slavery petitions. Served until 1859. Leader and founder of the Republican Party. Supported admission of Florida as a free state. Opposed annexation of Texas and the war against the Seminoles in Florida. Argued that slavery in territories and District of Columbia was unlawful. Active in Underground Railroad. Was censured by the House of Representatives for his opposition to slavery. Opposed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and against further expansion of slavery into the new territories acquired during the Mexican War of 1846.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 69, 84, 86, 100, 163, 165, 188, 199, 201, 202, 216, 218-220, 221, 224, 245; Dumond, 1961, pp. 243-245, 302, 339, 368; Filler, 1960, pp. 103, 145, 186, 224, 247, 258, 264, 268; Locke, 1901, pp. 64, 175; Mabee, 1970, pp. 56, 63, 261, 305, 306; Miller, 1996; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 6, 23-26, 32-33, 45, 48-49, 54-55, 60, 61, 63, 65, 69-72, 131, 136, 162-163, 166-167; Pease, 1965, pp. 411-417; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 45, 47-49, 56, 173, 305, 316-318; Stewart, 1970; Wilson, 1872, pp. 446-455; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 641-642; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 260; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 8, p. 946)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 641-642:

GIDDINGS, Joshua Reed, statesman, born in Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, 6 October, 1795; died in Montreal, Canada, 27 May, 1864. His parents moved to Canandaigua, New York, and in 1806 to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where the boy worked on his father's farm, and by devoting his evenings to hard study made up somewhat for his limited educational advantages. In 1812 he enlisted in a regiment commanded by Colonel Richard Hayes, being the youngest member, and was in an expedition sent to the Peninsula north of Sandusky Bay. There, 29 September, 1812, twenty-two men, of whom he was one, had a skirmish with Indians, in which six of the soldiers were killed and six wounded. Mr. Giddings afterward erected a monument there to the memory of his fallen comrades. After the war he became a teacher, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1820. He was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1826, served one term, and declined a re-election. In 1838 he was elected, as a Whig, to Congress, where he had hardly taken his seat before he became prominent as an advocate of the right of petition, and the abolition of slavery and the domestic slave-trade. He had been known as an active abolitionist before his election. His first attempt to discuss the subject on the floor of Congress, 11 February, 1839, was thwarted by the gag rule; but two years later, 9 February, 1841, he delivered a notable speech on the war with the Indians in Florida, in which he maintained that the contest was waged solely in the interest of slavery, the object being to enslave the Maroons of that state, who were affiliated with the Seminoles, and break up the asylums for fugitives. This subject he set forth more elaborately years afterward in his “Exiles of Florida” (Columbus, Ohio, 1858; new ed., New York, 1863). In the autumn of 1841 the “Creole” sailed from Virginia for Louisiana with a cargo of slaves, who got possession of the vessel, ran into the British port of Nassau, N. P., and, in accordance with British law, were set free. In the excitement that followed, Daniel Webster, secretary of state, wrote to Edward Everett, U. S. minister at London, saying that the government would demand indemnification for the owners of the slaves. Thereupon Mr. Giddings, 21 March, 1842, offered in the House of Representatives a series of resolutions in which it was declared that, as slavery was an abridgment of a natural right, it had no force beyond the territorial jurisdiction that created it; that when an American vessel was not in the waters of any state it was under the jurisdiction of the United States alone, which had no authority to hold slaves; and that the mutineers of the “Creole” had only resumed their natural right to liberty, and any attempt to re-enslave them would be unconstitutional and dishonorable. So much excitement was created by these resolutions that Mr. Giddings, on the advice of his friends, withdrew them, but said he would present them again at some future time. The house then, on motion of John Minor Botts, of Virginia, passed a resolution of censure (125 to 69), and by means of the previous question denied Mr. Giddings an opportunity to speak in his own defence. He at once resigned his seat and appealed to his constituents, who re-elected him by a large majority. In the discussion of the “Amistad” case (see Cinque), Mr. Giddings took the same ground as in the similar case of the “Creole,” and in a speech a few years later boldly maintained that to treat a human being as property was a crime. In 1843 he united with John Quincy Adams and seventeen other members of Congress in issuing an address to the people of the country, declaring that the annexation of Texas “would be identical with dissolution”; and in the same year he published, under the pen-name of “Pacificus,” a notable series of political essays. A year later he and Mr. Adams presented a report discussing a memorial from the Massachusetts legislature, in which they declared that the liberties of the American people were founded on the truths of Christianity. On the Oregon question, he held that the claim of the United States to the whole territory was just, and should be enforced, but predicted that the Polk administration would not keep the promise on which it had been elected — expressed in the motto “Fifty-four forty, or fight” — and his prediction was fulfilled. In 1847 he refused to vote for Robert C. Winthrop, the candidate of his party for speaker of the house, on the ground that his position on the slavery question was not satisfactory; and the next year, for the same reason, he declined to support the candidacy of General Taylor for the presidency, and acted with the Free-Soil Party. In 1849, with eight other Congressmen, he refused to support any candidate for the speakership who would not pledge himself so to appoint the standing committees that petitions on the subject of slavery could obtain a fair consideration; and the consequence was the defeat of Mr. Winthrop and the election of Howell Cobb, the Democratic candidate. Mr. Giddings opposed the compromise measures of 1850, which included the fugitive-slave law, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, taking a prominent part in the debates. In 1850, being charged with wrongfully taking important papers from the post-office, he demanded an investigation, and was exonerated by a committee that was composed chiefly of his political opponents. It was shown that the charge was the work of a conspiracy. In 1856, and again in 1858, he suddenly became unconscious, and fell while addressing the house. His Congressional career of twenty years' continuous service ended on 4 March, 1859, when he declined another nomination. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him U. S. consul-general in Canada, which office he held until the time of his death. One who knew him personally writes: “He was about six feet one inch in height, broad-shouldered, of very stalwart build, and was considered the most muscular man on the floor of the house. Whenever he spoke he was listened to with great attention by the whole house, the members frequently gathering around him. He had several affrays on the floor, but invariably came out ahead. On one occasion he was challenged by a southern member, and promptly accepted, selecting as the weapons two raw-hides. The combatants were to have their left hands tied together by the thumbs, and at a signal castigate each other till one cried enough. A look at Mr. Giddings's stalwart frame influenced the southerner to back out.” Mr. Giddings published a volume of his speeches (Boston, 1853), and wrote “The Rebellion: its Authors and Causes,” a history of the anti-slavery struggle in Congress, which was issued posthumously (New York, 1864). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 641-642.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 260:

GIDDINGS, JOSHUA REED (October 6, 1795- May 27, 1864), Abolitionist, was for twenty years a militant anti-slavery congressman from the Western Reserve of Ohio. His relentless attacks on slaveholders, marked by exaggeration and bitterness, and his severe, uncompromising attitude were in a large measure the inheritance of a pioneer, provincial ancestry. George Giddings emigrated from St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1635. His descendants moved in succession to Lyme and to Hartland, Connecticut, and then to Tioga Point (now Athens), in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Here Joshua Reed Giddings was born, the youngest of the children of Joshua and Elizabeth (Pease) Giddings. When he was six weeks old the family moved to Canandaigua, New York, only to move again ten years later to Ashtabula County, Ohio. His father had made large purchases of land, and the family was forced to toil long hours to carry the debt and wrest a living from the soil. The boy found little time to attend school. In the War of 1812 he enlisted as a substitute for his brother and saw a short service against the Indians in northwestern Ohio. For several years thereafter he divided his time between teaching school and farm work, interrupted by nine months' private study of mathematics and Latin in the home of a country parson. On September 24, 1819, he was married to Laura Waters, daughter of Abner Waters, an emigrant from Connecticut. He studied law in the office of Elisha Whittlesey at Canfield, Ohio, in 1821 was admitted to the bar, and then engaged in an eminently successful general practise at Jefferson, Ohio, until 1838. Meanwhile, in 1826, he served one term in the Ohio House of Representatives.

In 1838 Giddings was elected to the federal House of Representatives as a Whig. He threw himself into John Quincy Adams's struggle over the right of Congress to receive anti-slavery petitions, and in the early years of his incumbency he carried on a crusade in Congress for freedom of debate on all matters touching slavery and for a denial of the power of the federal government to tax the people of the free states for the support of slavery. He vigorously opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War in the belief that they were conspiracies to extend the institution. For attempting during the negotiations with Great Britain over the Creole case to put the House of Representatives on record as opposed to any federal measures in defense of the coastwise slave-trade, he was censured in resolutions which passed by a vote of 125 to 69. He resigned his seat in Congress in order to appeal to his constituents, and was triumphantly reelected.

President Polk's compromise with Great Britain over the Oregon boundary seemed to Giddings an attempt to avoid a war which might threaten the life of slavery. With the nomination of Taylor in 1848 he broke definitely with the Whigs and joined the Free-Soil party. In 1854, upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he joined the Republicans. By this time he had formulated an anti-slavery program which included the dedication of all national territories to freedom, opposition to disunion, and the use of the war powers of the President, if war came, to emancipate the slaves of the Southern states. Lincoln was his messmate in Washington in 1847-48, and a careful student of his speeches in Congress (Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1928, II, 19). Thus it may be that Giddings's greatest influence upon the course of American history was exerted in the evolution of Lincoln's ideas, or at least in the preparation of public opinion for Lincoln's leadership. Owing to a breakdown of his health in April 1858, Giddings was not renominated in his congressional district in the following campaign. He took an active part in the Republican convention of 1860, however, as he had in the convention of 1856, and in 1861 President Lincoln appointed him consul-general to Canada, at which post he served for the remainder of his life. Following his death in Montreal he was buried in Jefferson, Ohio. In addition to his printed speeches and essays he left two published works: The Exiles of Florida (1858), and The History of the Rebellion (1864). If a man is to be known by the company he keeps, Giddings should be associated politically with John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and John G. Palfrey. His severe attitude toward those who did not share his views regarding slavery was a result of a moral earnestness and an inflexible purpose. In private life he revealed quite different traits. He loved sports, music, and children, and his letters to his own children reveal a charming understanding, sympathy, and mutual confidence.

[The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (1892), by Geo. W. Julian, a son-in-law, is the best biography, though written with obvious bias. Part of the extensive Giddings correspondence has been preserved in the Library of Congress; part is in the possession of the Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society at Columbus, Ohio. For Giddings's attitude on slavery the best printed sources are his Speeches in Congress (1853) and the series of articles, later reprinted in the Julian biography, which first appeared in 1843 in the Western Reserve Chronicle over the name Pacificus. His annual addresses to his constituents were published in the Ashtabula Sentinel. For further reference see M. S. Giddings, The Giddings Family (1882); and the article by B. R. Long in the Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, January 1919.]

E. J. B.

Chapter: “Coastwise Slave-Trade. - Demands upon the British Government - Censure of Mr. Giddings,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

The British government was assured by Mr. Webster that the case was one " calling loudly for redress"; that the " Creole" was passing from one port to another of the United States, on a voyage " perfectly lawful,'' with persons bound to service belonging to American citizens, and recognized as property by the Constitution of the United States and in those States in which slavery existed; that the slaves rose, murdered one man, and that the " mutineers and murderers " took the vessel into a British port. He declared that it was the plain and obvious duty of the authorities of Nassau to assist in restoring to the master and crew their vessel, and in enabling them to resume their voyage and to take with them the mutineers and murderers to their own country to answer for their crimes. This extraordinary position and claim were laid before the British government; but all efforts to secure compensation for the slaves, or the surrender of the men who had asserted and maintained their own liberty, were unavailing. England declined to act the ignoble part of a slave-catcher for the slave-traffickers of the United States.

Mr. Giddings, then a member of the House of Representatives, was so impressed with the positions of the President and Senate, that he deemed it to be a duty he owed to his country to combat them. He drew up a series of resolutions, setting forth that prior to the adoption of the Constitution each State exercised full and perfect jurisdiction over slaves in its own territory; that by the adoption of the Constitution no part of that jurisdiction was delegated to the Federal government; that by the Constitution each State surrendered to the Federal government complete jurisdiction over commerce and navigation; that slavery, being an abridgment of the natural rights of men, could exist only by positive municipal law; that, when a ship belonging to a citizen of any State left the waters of the United States and entered upon the high seas, the persons on board became amenable to the laws of the United States; that when the brig " Creole " left Virginia the slavery laws of that State ceased to have jurisdiction over the persons on board; that in resuming their natural rights they violated no law of the United States, nor incurred any legal penalties; that all attempts to gain possession of or to re-enslave these persons were unauthorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States; that all attempts to exert the influence of the nation in favor of the coastwise slave-trade was subversive of the rights of the people of the free States, unauthorized by the Constitution, and prejudicial to the national character.

These resolutions were submitted to the consideration of Mr. Adams. He avowed his readiness to support them, excepting the one denying the right of the Federal government to abolish slavery in the States. He held that the national government, in case of insurrection or war, might, under the war-power, abolish slavery, and, with statesmanlike sagacity and a wise forecast of possible contingencies, which subsequent events proved to be near at hand, he did not wish to give a vote that would be quoted by the friends of slavery as a denial of that power; " but," he added, " I will cheerfully sustain all but that which denies this right to the Federal government.''

When, on the 21st of March, the State of Ohio was called, Mr. Giddings introduced these resolutions, and gave notice that he would call them up for" consideration the next day. The reading of the resolutions attracted profound attention, and created much excitement. Mr. Ward, a Democratic member from New York, proposed to bring the House to an immediate vote by demanding the previous question, Remarking that the resolutions were too important to be adopted or rejected without consideration, Mr. Everett of Vermont moved to lay them on the table; but his motion was defeated by a large majority. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina; rising under great excitement, remarked: "There are certain topics, like certain places, of which it might be said, ' Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' “The House, by the large vote of one hundred and twenty-two to sixty-one, sustained the previous question. Mr. Everett asked to be excused from voting. As the subject was very important, and would probably come before the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which he was a member, he did not desire to express an opinion until he had examined it. He was a gentleman of high character, ripe age, large experience, and of much influence with his party and in the House. Usually moderate and cautious, on this occasion he seemed to be influenced by the excitement around him, and expressed his “utter abhorrence of the firebrand course of the gentleman from Ohio.'' Mr. Fessenden, then a young and rising member of the House from Maine, thought the resolutions were too important to be voted upon without greater deliberation. Mr. Cushing, then understood to be a special friend of the President and an exponent of his views, after reading the resolutions at the clerk's table, said: “They appear to be a British argument on a great question between the British and American governments, and constitute an approximation to treason on which I intend to vote ' No.'"

At the request of Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Giddings withdrew the resolutions, remarking that they would be published, and gentlemen would have time to examine them with care, and would present them the next day, when the resolutions would be in order. Mr. Botts then rose and, remarking that the withdrawal of the resolutions did not excuse their presentation, submitted a preamble and resolution; the first setting forth that Mr. Giddings, had presented a series of resolutions touching the most important interest connected with a large portion of the Union, then a subject of negotiation with the government of Great Britain of the most delicate nature, the result of which " might involve those nations and perhaps the civilized world in war," in which mutiny and murder were justified and approved in terms shocking all sense of law, order, and humanity; and the latter declaring that this House holds that "the conduct of the said member is altogether inconsistent and unwarranted, and deserving the severest condemnation of the people of this country, and of this body in particular." Objection being made to the consideration of the resolution, Mr. Botts moved a suspension of the rules, but was not sustained by a vote of the House.

As Ohio was still under the call for resolutions, under the rule, Mr. Weller, a Democratic member from that State, adopted Mr. Botts's resolution as his own, offered it, and called for the previous question. Several members questioned the propriety of ordering the previous question; but Mr. Weller, who was a Democrat of the most intense proslavery type, persisted in demanding it. The Speaker, Mr. White of Kentucky, decided that on a question of privilege the previous question could not cut off a member from his defence. Mr. Fillmore appealed from the decision; and the House overruled the Speaker by a large majority, and adjourned.

Thus arraigned for a conscientious discharge of public duty, Mr. Giddings spent the entire night and the forenoon of the next day in preparing for his defence. Calling at the residence of Mr. Adams, for the purpose of consultation, he found, he says," the aged patriot laboring under great distress." He expressed to Mr. Giddings the fear that no defence would be permitted; that the question would be taken without debate, and the vote of censure passed. Mr. Giddings anticipated the vote of censure; but he suggested that the reflections of the night would convince members of “the impropriety of condemning a man unheard." To this suggestion Mr. Adams made the discriminating and suggestive reply: "You are not as familiar with the slaveholding character as I am. Slaveholders act from impulse, not from reflection. They act together from interest, and have no dread of the displeasure of their constituents when they act for slavery."

On the assembling of the House, the Speaker remarked that the first business was on seconding the demand for the previous question. Mr. Weller said he would withdraw his demand for the previous question if Mr. Giddings would proceed with his defence, with the understanding that it should be called when he closed. But, Mr. Giddings refusing to make any terms to secure what he deemed to be his constitutional right, the previous question was ordered by seven majority. Mr. Weller then moved the suspension of the rules, to allow Mr. Giddings to make his defence; but the Speaker pronounced the motion out of order. To the suggestion of Mr. Adams that while the previous question cut off other members it ought not to apply to the member accused, the Speaker replied that the House had decided that the previous question applied to cases of privilege, and the privilege of one was the privilege of all.

The motion was made to hear Mr. Giddings by unanimous consent, and it was announced that such consent had been given. Mr. Giddings then said:" Mr. Speaker, I stand before the House in a peculiar position." Mr. Cooper of Georgia then objected to his proceeding, and he took his seat. Members gathered around Mr. Cooper, and persuaded him to withdraw his objection; but it was renewed by Mr. Calhoun of Massachusetts, who declared that he would not see a member of the House speak under such circumstances.
Mr. Giddings states that when he rose to speak he had intended to say: “It is proposed to pass a vote of censure upon me, substantially for the reason that I differ in opinion from a majority of the members. The vote is about to be taken without giving me an opportunity to be heard. It were idle for me to say I am ignorant of the disposition of a majority of the members to pass a vote of censure. I have been violently assailed in a personal manner, but have had no opportunity of being heard in reply. Nor do I ask for any favor at the hands of gentlemen; but, in the name of an insulted constituency, in behalf of one of the States of this Union, in behalf of the people of these States and of our Federal Constitution, I demand a hearing in the ordinary mode of proceeding. I accept no other privilege. I will receive no other courtesy."

The House, by a vote of one hundred and twenty-five to sixty-nine, adopted the vote of censure. Mr. Giddings then rose and, taking formal leave of the Speaker and officers of the House, retired from the hall. As he reached the front door he met Mr. Clay and Mr. Crittenden. Mr. Giddings states that "as Mr. Clay extended to me his hand he thanked me for the firmness with which I had met the outrage perpetrated upon me, and declared that no man would ever doubt my perfect right to state my own views, particularly while the Executive and the Senate were expressing theirs." Mr. Giddings immediately resigned, returned to Ohio, issued an address to the people of his district, was re-elected by a largely increased majority, and in five weeks took his seat in the House, “clothed with instructions from the people of his district to re-present his resolutions, and maintain to the extent of his power the doctrine which they asserted." He received a warm greeting from the friends of the freedom of debate, who had bravely stood by him in his time of trial.

The action of the House of Representatives, thus signally rebuked by Mr. Giddings's constituents, was also condemned by public meetings, whose proceedings were presented to Congress. Even some Democratic papers, among them the New York "Evening Post,'' asserted the right of Mr. Giddings to present his resolutions. And William C. Bryant, its accomplished editor, declared that if he was a resident of Mr. Giddings's district he would use every honorable means to secure his re-election. This action of the people produced most marked effects upon Congress. The majority who censured Mr. Giddings, fearing if the resolutions were again introduced they would be compelled to vote upon the principles embodied in them, voted, during the remainder of the session, when by the rules resolutions might be presented, to proceed to other business. Finding he could not present the resolutions, he reasserted and vindicated the principles embodied in them in an able and effective speech, which was listened to without interruption. Indeed; notwithstanding all their bluster and arrogant pretension, there seemed from that time a marked falling-off in their zeal, and a manifest disposition to desist from claims they had just declared their purpose to press even to and beyond the very verge of war. And this, notwithstanding the significant fact that the British ministry had not only refused the indemnity so clamorously demanded, but declined to deliver up Madison Washington and his compeers of the " Creole's" brave "nineteen," stigmatized by members of Congress as " murderers and mutineers." When Lord Ashburton was charged with the mission of settling all questions of difference between the two nations, the British government especially instructed him to hold no correspondence on points pertaining to this controversy.

This sudden change of tactics of Southern members not only appears in marked contrast with their previous violent demonstrations, but provokes no very flattering estimate of the course of those Northern senators who had not a single vote to cast against the resolutions of Mr. Calhoun, which defiantly demanded what even the South itself found it convenient to forget. Indeed, that absence of a single negative that unbroken silence, spoke louder than words. Trumpet-tongued it proclaimed the vassalage of the nation to the Slave Power, and the ignoble and cruel bondage under which the parties and public men of those days were held. It revealed the humiliating fact that they were obliged to smother their convictions and ignore the claims of truth, and were compelled to take the weightiest questions of government and those of national importance from the high court of reason and conscience into the secret conclave of party cabals, inspired by the spirit of slavery and under the discipline of the plantation. If the time ever comes when "things” shall be "what they seem," and conscience and candor shall take the place of mere policy and pretension, it will be regarded as among the marvels of history that men acting from such motives in their public capacity should ever exhibit anything honorable and hearty in their personal and social relations, or that a representation acquiescing and participating in such an administration of public affairs could be anything but demoralized and debauched in the personnel of which it was composed.

Mr. Giddings had been appointed, by the Speaker, chairman of the Committee on Claims, a position he held at the time of his resignation, when another was appointed for the remainder of the session. At the beginning of the next session, an unavailing effort was made by Southern members to induce the Speaker not to reappoint Mr. Giddings to this important post. Mr. White, a personal friend of Mr. Clay, and among the most liberal of Southern statesmen, had pronounced the vote of censure an outrage, and without hesitation made Mr. Giddings chairman again of the committee. Consisting of nine members, it was composed of four Northern and two Southern Whigs, one Southern and two Northern Democrats. The three Democrats and two Southern Whigs had given their votes for the censure, and they deemed it a humiliation to sit with him as chairman. They accordingly determined to revive an old rule of the House, which had practically become obsolete, authorizing the committees to choose their own chairmen. A member of the committee apprised Mr. Giddings of this purpose, and advised him to resign. Having, however, acted according to the dictates of his conscience, he chose to abide the result. Mr. Arnold, a slaveholding Whig of Tennessee, refusing to support a scheme which he styled an outrage on a member because he was opposed to slavery, the project fell through and Mr. Giddings was permitted to retain his position.

But Mr. Giddings's earnest and outspoken fidelity to principle and to the cause of human rights often involved him in conflicts and exposed him to personal dangers, which well-illustrated at once the coarse brutality and domineering violence of the slave-masters and the rough road they were called to travel who dared to question their supremacy and oppose their policy. A somewhat marked example occurred near the close of the session in 1845. For the purpose of exhibiting the rascality of slaveholding demands, and the guilty subserviency and complicity of the government in yielding to those demands, he referred to the treaty of Indian Spring, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for " the off spring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage." And, said Mr. Giddings, Congress actually paid that sum” for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves."

Mr. Giddings's characterization of these outrageous and indecent demands and of this utterly indefensible policy greatly nettled the Southern members. Mr. Black of Georgia, in a towering passion, poured forth a torrent of coarse invectives and insinuations. He charged that Mr. Giddings had been interested in the horses and wagon lost by Mr. Torrey in his attempt to aid escaping fugitives; that Torrey died in the penitentiary; that the member of Ohio ought to be there; and, if Congress could decide the question, that would be his doom. With low-minded impertinence, he advised him to return to his constituents to “inquire if he had a character," asserting that he had none in that hall. To this gross assault Mr. Giddings replied with becoming dignity and force. Alluding to the policy which would throw around all executive and congressional action in behalf of slavery the shield "of perpetual silence," he said he did not hold the member from Georgia so much responsible as he did "the more respectable members" who stood around him, for the display of that " brutal coarseness which nothing but the moral putridity of slavery could encourage.", What he had said, he contended, were historic facts that could not be disproved. To the personal assault he should make no other reply than that he stood there clothed with the confidence of an intelligent constituency, while his antagonist, alluding to Mr. Black's failure to secure a re-election, had been discarded.

Of course, language so direct and severe did but fan to a fiercer flame the fire that was already raging, and a collision seemed inevitable. Mr. Black, approaching Mr. Giddings with an uplifted cane, said: “If you repeat those words I will knock you down." The latter repeating them, the former was seized by his friends and borne from the hall. Mr. Dawson of Louisiana, who on a previous occasion had attempted to assault him, approaching him and, cocking his pistol, profanely exclaimed: " I ‘ll shoot him; by G-d I 'll shoot him ' " At the same moment, Mr. Causin of Maryland placed himself in front of Mr. Dawson, with his right hand upon his weapon concealed in his bosom. At this juncture four members from the Democratic side took their position by the side of the member from Louisiana, each man putting his hand in his pocket and apparently grasping his weapon. At the same moment Mr. Rayner of North Carolina, Mr. Hudson of Massachusetts, and Mr. Foot of Vermont, came to Mr. Giddings's rescue, who, thus confronted and thus supported, continued his speech. Dawson stood fronting him till its close, and Causin remained facing the latter until he returned to the Democratic side. Thus demoralized and imbruted seemed the men, even those high in station, who assumed to be the champions of slavery and its policy. Upon such men moral considerations were lost. The only forces they ever respected were those of physical power.

Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 446-455.



GILBERT, Abijah, 1806-1881, New York, advocate of abolitionism. Member of the Whig and Republican Parties. U.S. Senator from Florida, 1869-1875.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 644; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 644:

GILBERT, Abijah, senator, born in Gilbertsville, Otsego County, New York, 18 June, 1806; died there, 23 November, 1881. His grandfather, Abijah, settled in Otsego (then Montgomery) county in 1787, and his father, Joseph, was engaged there in manufacturing and other business. The son entered Hamilton College, but did not complete his course, owing to illness. He engaged in mercantile pursuits in the country, and afterward in New York City, but retired in 1850. In politics he was a strong Whig, and afterward a Republican, and was an early advocate of the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War he moved to St. Augustine, Florida, and took an active part in the reconstruction of the state. He was elected to the U. S. Senate as a Republican, and served from 1869 till 1875, after which he retired to private life, continuing to reside in St. Augustine till just before his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 644.



GILLETT, Francis, 1807-1879, Connecticut, U.S. Senator, co-founder of the Republican Party, anti-slavery advocate. Member of the Liberty, Free Soil Party, and co-founder of the Republican Party. Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate in 1854.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 652; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 490)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 652:

GILLETTE, Francis, senator, born in Windsor, now Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, 14 December, 1807: died in Hartford, Connecticut, 30 September, 1879. He was graduated at Yale in 1829 with the valedictory, and then studied law with Governor William W. Ellsworth. Failing health compelled him to relinquish this pursuit, and he settled in Bloomfield as a farmer. In 1882 and again in 1836 he was sent to the legislature, where he gained notice in 1838 by his anti-slavery speech advocating the striking out of the word "white" from the state constitution. In 1841 he was nominated against his own will for the office of governor by the Liberty Party, and during the twelve following years frequently received a similar nomination from the Liberty and Free-Soil parties. He was elected by a coalition between the Whigs, temperance men, and Free-Soilers, in 1854, to fill the vacancy in the U. S. Senate caused by the resignation of Truman Smith, and served from 25 May, 1854, till 3 March, 1855. Mr. Gillette was active in the formation of the Republican Party, and was for several years a silent partner in the "Evening Press," the first distinctive organ of that party. He was active in the cause of education throughout his life, was a coadjutor of Dr. Henry Barnard from 1838 till 1842, one of the first trustees of the State Normal School, and for many years its president. Mr. Gillette took interest in agricultural matters, was an advocate of total abstinence, and delivered lectures and addresses on both subjects. He moved to Hartford in 1852, and passed the latter part of his life in that city. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 652.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 290:

GILLETTE, FRANCIS (December 14, 1807-September 30, 1879), statesman, was a descendant of Jonathan Gillett, who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, about 1636. Francis Gillet (or Gillette as he signed himself) was born in Bloomfield, then a part of Windsor, the son of Ashbel and Achsah (Francis) Gillet. When he was six years old his father died. Between the boy and his stepfather there was no sympathy, a situation which embittered his formative years. Gillette received his preparatory education at Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his mother was then living, and was graduated from Yale College in 1829. He was an excellent student, the unanimous choice of his classmates for valedictorian, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1834 he married Eliza Daggett Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker. He had begun the study of law, but because of ill health, was obliged to abandon it and take up the life of a farmer on the family estate in Windsor. There he remained until 1852 when he purchased a farm in Hartford. Twice he was sent to the Connecticut House of Representatives, in 1832 from Windsor and in 1838 from Bloomfield. As a member of the Assembly, he identified himself with the anti-slavery group. In 1838, supporting an amendment to erase the word "white" from the state constitution, he professed to find "the length of the nose" as valid a qualification as color for political rights (Columbian Register, New Haven, May 26, 1838).

In 1841 he became the first candidate of the Liberty party for governor. Repeatedly, during the twelve years following, he received the Abolitionist or Free-Soil nominations and was as often defeated. In 1854, however, his long association with minority parties bore fruit, when a coalition of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and temperance men elected him United States senator to complete the unexpired term of Truman Smith. He reached Washington barely in time to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. During his brief stay in the Senate (May 24, 1854-March 3, 1855), he delivered one formal speech on the slavery issue (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, l Session, pp. 1616-18). In Connecticut he was actively interested in the formation of the Republican party, whose first organ, the Hartford Evening Press, knew him as a silent partner. To the temperance movement, as well as the anti-slavery crusade, he lent his vigorous support. He was an incorporator of the American Temperance Life Insurance Company, now the Phoenix Mutual. He devoted his efforts, also, to the cause of education, and gave sympathy and cooperation to Henry Barnard [q.v.], who was laboring to reform the Connecticut schools. When the State Normal School was established in 1849, Gillette became chairman of the Board of Trustees and held that office until 1865. He embodied qualities common to many New Englanders of his day, a reforming spirit and a passion for minority causes. His interest in abolition, temperance, and education, though sometimes a bit combative, was sincere and unselfish (Hartford Courant, October l, 1879), and he was the antithesis of the professional politician and office-seeker.

[H. R. Stiles, The History and Geneals. of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, volume II (1892), contains the Gillet genealogy and a long biographical footnote on Francis Gillette (p. 293). See also J . H. Trumbull. Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), I, 516, 611, II, ch. iii; Obituary Record Graduates Yale College, 2 series (1880); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); obituary in Hartford Courant, October 1, 1879.]

D. E. O.



GILMER, Thomas Walker, 1802-1844, Virginia, statesman, lawyer, Governor of Virginia, U.S. Congressman. Member of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and Secretary of the Albemarle, Virginia, auxiliary of the ACS. Worked with William Broadnax in March 1833 to get state appropriation for support of the ACS. It appropriated $18,000 a year for five years.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 657; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 308; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 107, 183-184)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 657:

GILMER, Thomas Walker, statesman, born in Virginia; died near Washington, D. C., 28 February, 1844. He studied law, practised in Charlottesville, Virginia, and served for many years in the state legislature, for two sessions as speaker. In 1840-'1 he was governor of Virginia. In 1841 he entered congress, and, although he had been elected as a Whig, sustained President Tyler's vetoes. He was re-elected as a Democrat in 1842 by a close vote. His competitor, William L. Goggin, contested the result without success. On 15 February, 1844, he was appointed by President Tyler secretary of the navy, and resigned his seat in congress on 18 February to enter on the duties of the office, but ten days later was killed by the bursting of a gun on board the United States steamer “Princeton.” Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.



GILMORE, Joseph Albree, governor of New Hampshire, born in Weston, Vermont, 10 June, 1811; died in Concord, New Hampshire 17 April, 1867. He was politically a Whig; in 1858 was elected as a Republican to the state senate, was re-elected in 1859, and made president of the Senate that year.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

GILMORE, Joseph Albree, governor of New Hampshire, born in Weston, Vermont, 10 June, 1811; died in Concord, New Hampshire 17 April, 1867. He enjoyed scanty educational advantages, and while a boy made his way to Boston and entered a store. At the age of twenty-one he was in business for himself. The railroad to Concord, New Hampshire, was completed on 1 September, 1842. and about the same time he moved to that place, and opened a wholesale grocery. On 3 August, 1848, he became construction-agent, and afterward superintendent, of the Concord and Claremont Railroad, and 24 November. 1856, superintendent of the Concord Railroad, which came to include the Manchester and Lawrence and Concord and Portsmouth Railroads and their branches, making a system of about 175 miles, of which he continued in charge until 11 August, 1866. He was politically a Whig; in 1858 was elected as a Republican to the state senate, was re-elected in 1859, and made president of the Senate that year. In March, 1863, he was the Republican candidate for governor; there was no choice by the people, but he was elected in June by the legislature, and re-elected by the people, in March, 1864. The two political contests were the severest ever known in New Hampshire, and he assumed the governorship at the darkest period of the Civil War. By his predecessors, Governors Goodwin and Berry, 16 regiments of infantry, 4 companies of cavalry, 1 light battery, and 3 companies of sharp-shooters, making over 17,000 volunteers, had been put into the field; but in 1863 patriotic fervor had somewhat abated, voluntary enlistments were few, and President Lincoln had ordered a draft. Governor Gilmore, however, raised and equipped the 18th Infantry, the 1st Cavalry, and the 1st Heavy Artillery, which, together with the recruits forwarded to existing organizations, made the number of men furnished during his term of office about 14,000, and the entire number from New Hampshire more than 31.000, from a population of fewer than 330,000. Governor Gilmore retired from office in June, 1865, in feeble health. His characteristics were restless activity, unbounded energy, impatience of restraint, liberality, and public spirit. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 658.



GILPIN, Edward Woodward, jurist, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 15 July, 1805; died in Dover, Delaware, 29 April. 1876. He was a Whig in early life, but became a Democrat in 1856. During the Civil War he was an ardent Unionist.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 659:

GILPIN, Edward Woodward, jurist, born in Wilmington, Delaware, 15 July, 1805; died in Dover, Delaware, 29 April. 1876. In his youth he was in straitened circumstances, and learned the trade of a currier. He was afterward clerk in a store, but finally studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1827. He was attorney-general of Delaware in 1840-'50, and from May, 1857, till his death was chief justice of the state, he was a Whig in early life, but became a Democrat in 1856. During the Civil War he was an ardent Unionist. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 659.



GOODLOE, Daniel Reaves, 1814-1902, associate editor and editor of anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, in Washington, DC, the newspaper of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. He obtained a position with the Whig Standard, of which he shortly became editor. Worked, with abolitionist leader Gamaliel Bailey. Goodloe also wrote for the New York Tribune. He was a friend of Horace Greeley and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Goodloe wrote Inquiry into the Causes Which Have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States: In Which the Question of Slavery is Considered in a Politico-Economical Point of View. By a Carolinian. [1846].

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 265; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 63, 116, 122, 152, 156, 240, 261, 263-264; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 39, 162)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 390:

GOODLOE, DANIEL REAVES (May 28, 1814-January 18, 1902), Abolitionist, author, was born in Louisburg, North Carolina, the son of Dr. Kemp Strother and Mary Reaves (Jones) Goodloe. He attended a local academy for some years and was then apprenticed to a printer in Oxford, North Carolina. True to the adage, he never thereafter got far away from printer's ink, beginning his journalistic career as soon as he reached his majority by publishing the Examiner in Oxford. It soon failed and he went to Tennessee and attended a school in Mount Pleasant. In 1836 he volunteered for service against the Creek Indians in Alabama. They soon made peace and his company then volunteered for the Seminole War and served in Florida. The pension Goodloe later received for this service supported him in his old age. Returning to North Carolina, he studied law under Robert B. Gilliam and was admitted to the bar but was unsuccessful in practise. He was offered a nomination to the legislature but declined because he was out of harmony with the people of the state on the subject of slavery, and finally in 1844 drifted to Washington where Senator Willie P. Mangum secured for him a position with the Whig
Standard, of which he shortly became editor. That soon failed, and he edited the Georgetown Advocate and later the Christian Statesman until 1852 when he was made assistant editor of the National Era, an anti-slavery paper established in 1847 to advocate the principles of the Liberty party. When Gamaliel Bailey, the founder and editor, died, Goodloe succeeded him and held the position until the outbreak of the war caused the collapse of the paper. Into its columns he brought writers of distinction, such as Grace Greenwood, Mary Mapes Dodge, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Southworth.

While he was still an apprentice, his reading in the Richmond Whig and Richmond Examiner, both advocates of emancipation in Virginia, of the debates on the subject, had converted him to anti-slavery views; and he quickly became a full-fledged Abolitionist. In 1844 he published in the New-York American an anti-slavery article, the first of a considerable number which came from his pen. After the suspension of the National Era he was Washington correspondent for the New York Times until 1862, when President Lincoln appointed him chairman of the commission to carry out the compensation provision of the act emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia. From the close of 1863 he did editorial work on the Washington Chronicle, and later in 1865 President Johnson appointed him United States marshal for North Carolina. He supported Johnson's policy of restoration until 1866 when he became convinced that it was not sufficiently drastic. He accordingly signed the call for the Southern Loyalist convention, and, advocating congressional reconstruction, joined in the organization of the Republican party in the state in 1867. He was violently opposed, however, to the proscriptive tendencies or the Carpet-baggers and of certain native leaders, such as Holden, whom he disliked and distrusted, and he soon parted company with them. In 1868 he bitterly opposed the ratification of the "Carpet-bag" constitution and was an independent candidate for governor against Holden. Later he went again to Washington where he was a free-lance writer, but finally returned to Louisburg, North Carolina. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy in 1900 but survived it two years. He died in Warrenton, North Carolina, and is buried there.

Goodloe's most important writings include the New-York American article of 1844, later published as a pamphlet entitled, Inquiry into the Causes which have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth . . . in the Southern States (1846); The South and the North: Being a Reply to a Lecture ... by Ellwood Fisher (1849); Is it Expedient to Introduce Slavery into Kansas? (1855); The Southern Platform (1858); Federalism Unmasked (1860); Emancipation and the War (1861); "Resources and Industrial Condition of the Southern States" in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1865 (1866); Letter of Daniel R. Goodloe to Hon. Charles Sumner on the Situation of A ff airs in North Carolina (1868); The Marshalship in North Carolina (1869); The Birth of the Republic (1889); and A History of the Demonetization of Silver (1890). He wrote (Bassett, post, p. 56) the history of Reconstruction in North Carolina which appeared without credit in Samuel S. ("Sunset") Cox's Three Decades of Federal Legislation (1885). During 1894-95 he wrote a series of articles on the same subject for the Raleigh News and Observer. A close friend of Greeley and Raymond, he wrote constantly for the New York Tribune and the New York Times. Goodloe was attractive and genial, generous to a fault, unswervingly courageous, charitable, and tender-hearted. He had a genius for friendship and held the affection and confidence even of political enemies.

[J. S. Bassett, "Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in History and Pol. Sci., series XVI, no. 6 (1898); S. B. Weeks in Southern Historical Assn. Pubs., Volume II (1898); News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), January 26, 1902.]

J. G. de R. H.



GOVE, William Hazeltine, politician, born in Weare, New Hampshire, 10 July, 1817: died there, 11 March, 1876. He early became an active worker in the anti-slavery cause, a supporter of the Liberty Party, and later a prominent Free-Soiler. While connected with the latter party he became well known as a stump speaker, and gained the title of the " silver-tongued orator of New Hampshire."

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 697-698:

GOVE, William Hazeltine, politician, born in Weare, New Hampshire, 10 July, 1817: died there, 11 March, 1876. He received a common-school education, taught in Lynn, Massachusetts, one Year, and an equal length of time in Rochester, New York. He also studied law a short time in Boston. He early became an active worker in the anti-slavery cause, a supporter of the Liberty Party, and later a prominent Free-Soiler. While connected with the latter party he became well known as a stump speaker, and gained the title of the " silver-tongued orator of New Hampshire." He was a member of the first Free-Soil Convention, held in Buffalo, New York, in 1848, was a candidate of his party for the legislature year after year, and in 1851, by a combination of Free-Soilers and Whigs, he was elected. He was re-elected in 1852 and 1855. After the Free-Soil organization was merged in the Republican Party, Mr. Gove was for many years an active Republican. During the administrations of Lincoln and Johnston he held the office of postmaster. In 1871, having become dissatisfied with his party, he engaged in forming a labor reform party, whose voters, combining with the Democrats, elected him to the lower branch of the legislature, of which body he was chosen speaker. In 1872 he was a delegate to the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati, and acted thence forth with the Democratic Party, which elected him to the state senate in 187&-'4." In the latter year he was made its president. As a young man Mr. Gove was engaged in the Washingtonian temperance movement, and spoke and wrote eloquently in aid of the cause. He edited for a short time the "Temperance Banner." published at Concord. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 697-698.



GRANGER, Amos Phelps, cousin of Francis, politician, born in Suffield, Connecticut, 3 June, 1789; died in Syracuse, New York, 20 August, 1866. He was chairman of the Whig delegation from New York in the National Convention of 1852 that nominated Winfield Scott for the presidency, in the Auburn Convention of 1853.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 706:

GRANGER, Amos Phelps, cousin of Francis, politician, born in Suffield, Connecticut, 3 June, 1789; died in Syracuse, New York, 20 August, 1866, settled in Manlius, Onondaga County, New York, in 1811, and engaged in mercantile business. He raised and commanded a company of militia that served at Sackett's Harbor in the war of 1813—'15. He moved to Syracuse in 1820, and acquired a fortune through real-estate investments. He was chairman of the Whig delegation from New York in the National Convention of 1852 that nominated Winfield Scott for the presidency, in the Auburn Convention of 1853 he wrote and offered the resolutions which, it is claimed, originated the Republican Party. He was elected to Congress in 1854 and in 1856. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 706.



GRANGER, Francis (December 1, 1792-August 28, 1868), American political leader. In 1834 he returned to Congress, serving two more terms in the House. During this period he joined John Quincy Adams in opposing Southern restriction on the right of petition against slavery and earned the hostility of the slave-holders. Opposed to the annexation of Texas.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1 pp. 482-483:

GRANGER, FRANCIS (December 1, 1792-August 28, 1868), American political leader, was born in Suffield, Connecticut, the-second of the three sons of Gideon [q.v.] and Mindwell (Pease) Granger. His father was for thirteen years postmaster general in the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. Francis entered Yale College at the age of sixteen and graduated in 1811. When his father removed to Canandaigua, New York, in 1816, the son followed and began the practise of law. In 1817 he married Cornelia Rutson Van Rensselaer, daughter of Jeremiah Van Rensselaer of Utica, a well-to-do Federalist. Granger was elected to the state Assembly in 1825 as a follower of Governor Clinton, won a following, and when reelected in 1826 received thirty-three votes for speaker, but was not chosen. The opportunity now presented itself for him to extend his popularity. With the Anti-Masonic excitement sweeping New York, Granger made himself one of the conspicuous figures of the movement and thus became associated with Thurlow Weed, who was just rising into prominence. He was chairman of a select committee of the legislature that recommended more stringent laws against kidnapping, and of a legislative joint committee of investigation with power to visit the seat of the excitement, hear witnesses, examine papers, and make a report. The committee's recommendations were rejected, but Granger won considerable prominence. His political strength was augmented at this time by his advocacy of a canal in Chenango County. In 1828 he was nominated by the National Republicans for lieutenant-governor, and by the Anti-Masons, who held a separate convention, for governor. After some consideration he accepted the first of these nominations, but was defeated in the election. The next year he returned to the Assembly. In 1830 he was the unanimous choice of both the Anti-Masons and the National Republicans for governor, and he was nominated again in 1832. Both times he was defeated, and in 1834 his candidacy was not renewed, William H. Seward being nominated in his stead.

Granger was by this time closely associated with the rising Whig party. He was elected to Congress as a Whig in 1834, but played a relatively inconspicuous role. In 1836 he was nominated on the Anti-Masonic ticket for vice-president, and by the Whigs of Massachusetts for the same office. The election was thrown into the Senate, where Granger received sixteen votes, against thirty-three for Richard M. Johnson. He now returned to Congress, serving two more terms in the House. During this period he joined John Quincy Adams in opposing Southern restriction on the right of petition and earned the hostility of the slave-holders. He was a supporter of Harrison's candidacy in 1840, and won the victory of the Whig ticket was appointed postmaster-general. His nomination was opposed by Southern members of the Senate but was confirmed. After the succession of Tyler to the presidency, and the rupture between the President and the Whig leaders, Granger accompanied most of the other members of the cabinet into retirement. Reelected to Congress to fill a vacancy, he served until March 3, 1843, but thereafter resisted every effort to bring him back into public life, even declining the offer of a foreign mission.

His views on the slavery question were now becoming more conservative. Though opposed to the annexation of Texas, he broke with Weed on slavery in 1845, and was a partisan of the Compromise measures of 1850 and a strong supporter of the Fillmore administration. He presided over the Whig convention of 1850, having been put in the chair, as Weed confesses in his Autobiography (II, 186), because that was where he could do the least harm. When the convention adopted resolutions praising William H. Seward, Granger retired from the hall. He and the conservative Whigs held a separate convention, but made no nominations for the state officers. Granger at this time gave the name to a faction of hit-party, the Silver Grays, so called from the flowing gray hair of their leader. Again retiring into private life, he emerged for the Peace Conference of 1861. In this convention he appeared as an ardent advocate of compromise. He was by now thoroughly conservative and had voted the Bell-Everett ticket in 1860. His part in the Conference was not very effective. From 1861 till his death he lived in retirement at Canandaigua.

[J. N. Granger, Lancelot Granger of Newbury, Massachusetts, and Suffield, Connecticut: A Genealogical History (1893); Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (2 volumes, 1884), ed. by his daughter, Harriet A. Weed; Wm. H. Seward: An Autobiography, from 1801 to 1834 (3 volumes, 1891), ed. by F. W. Seward; De Alva S. Alexander, Pol. History State of New York (3 volumes, 1906-09); F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, Volume VI (1912); J. D. Hammond, History of the Pol. Parties in the State of New York (3 volumes, 1852); L. E. Chittenden, A Report of the Debates and Proc. in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention, for Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the U. S., Held at Washington, D. C., in February, A. D., 1861 (1864); obituary in Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, August 31, 1868.

J. D. P.



GREELEY, Horace, 1811-1872, journalist, newspaper publisher, The New York Tribune. Anti-Slavery Whig, member activist in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Major opponent of slavery. Co-founder, Liberal Republican Party in 1854. Supporter of the Union.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 62, 110, 147-149, 159, 182, 253, 258, 262; Dumont, 1961, p. 352; Filler, 1960, pp. 6, 45, 56, 88, 112, 117, 163, 219, 237, 259; Greely, 1866; Greely, 1868; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 33, 54, 78, 81, 86, 96, 98, 116-117, 136, 138, 143, 146, 153, 154, 199, 204, 217-220, 227-229, 233; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 65, 67, 69, 141, 324, 476, 692-695; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 734-741; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 529; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 370-373; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 647)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 734-741:

GREELEY, Horace, journalist, born in Amherst, New Hampshire, 3 February, 1811; died in Pleasantville, near New York City, 29 November, 1872. His birthplace is shown in the accompanying engraving. On both sides his ancestors were of Scotch-Irish origin, but had been settled in New England for some generations. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a small farmer, always poor, and, by the time Horace was ten years old, a bankrupt and a fugitive from the state, to escape arrest for debt. Horace was the third child, four followed him, and when the little homestead of fifty acres of stony land at Amherst was lost and his father became a day-laborer at West Haven, Vermont, the united exertions of all that were able to work brought the family only a hard and bare subsistence. Horace had been a precocious child, feeble, and not fond of sports, but with a strong bent to books. He could read before he could talk plainly, when he was not yet three years old, and he was soon after the acknowledged chief in the frequent contests of the village spelling-match. He received only a common-school education, and after his sixth year had schooling only in winter, laboring at other times in the field with his father and brothers. When six years old he declared he would be a printer, and at eleven he tried to be apprenticed in the village office. He was rejected then on account of his youth, but tried again, three years later, at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the “Northern Spectator,” and was accepted as an apprentice for five years, to be boarded and lodged, and, after six months, to be paid at the rate of $40 a year. He learned the business rapidly, became an accurate compositor, gained the warm regard of his employer and of the whole village, showed a special aptitude for politics and political statistics, rose to be the neighborhood oracle on disputed points, took a leading part in the village debating-society, and was intrusted with a portion of the editorial work on the paper. Meantime he spent next to nothing, dressed in the cheapest way, went without a coat in summer and without an overcoat in winter, was laughed at as “gawky” and “stingy,” and sent almost every cent of his forty dollars a year to his father. At last, in June, 1830, the paper was suspended, and young Greeley, then in his twentieth year, was released from his apprenticeship, and turned out upon the world as a “tramping jour printer.” Fourteen months of such experience sufficed. He visited his father, who had now moved to the “new country” near Erie, Pennsylvania, worked with him on the farm when he could not find employment in country printing-offices, sent home most of his earnings, when he could, and at last decided to seek his fortune in New York. With his wardrobe in a bundle, slung over his shoulder by a stick, he set out on foot through the woods, walked to Buffalo, thence made his way, partly on canal-boats, partly by walking the towpath, to Albany, and then down the Hudson on a tug-boat. With $10 in his pocket, and his stick and bundle still over his shoulder, on 18 August, 1831, he entered the city in which he was to be recognized as the first of American journalists. He wandered for days from one printing-office to another vainly searching for work. His grotesque appearance was against him; nobody supposed he could be a competent printer, and most thought him a runaway apprentice. At last an Irishman at the cheap boarding-house he had found told him of an office where a compositor was needed; a Vermont printer interceded for him, when he was about to be rejected on his appearance, and at last he was taken on trial for the day. The matter assigned him had been abandoned by other printers because of its uncommon difficulty. At night his was found the best day's work that anybody had yet done, and his position was secure.





He worked as a journeyman printer in New York for fourteen months, sometimes in job-offices, for a few days each in the offices of the “Evening Post” and the “Commercial Advertiser,” longer in that of the “Spirit of the Times,” making friends always with the steady men he encountered, and saving money. Finally, in January, 1833, he took part in the first effort to establish a penny paper in New York. His partner was Francis V. Story, a fellow-printer: they had $150 between them, and on this capital and a small lot of type bought on credit from George Bruce, on his faith in Greeley's honest face and talk, they took the contract for printing the “Morning Post.” It failed in three weeks, but they had only lost about one third of their capital, and still had their type. They had therefore become master job-printers, and Greeley never worked again as a journeyman. They got a “Bank-note Reporter” to print, which brought them in about $15 a week, and a little triweekly paper, “The Constitutionalist,” which was the lottery organ. Its columns regularly contained the following card : “Greeley and Story, No. 54 Liberty street, New York, respectfully solicit the patronage of the public to their business of letter-press-printing, particularly lottery-printing, such as schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on favorable terms.”

Mr. Greeley had renewed his habit of writing for the papers on which he was employed as a compositor. He was thus a considerable contributor to the “Spirit of the Times,” and now, by an article contributed to the “Constitutionalist,” defending the lotteries against a popular feeling then recently aroused, he attracted the attention of Dudley S. Gregory, of Jersey City, the agent of a great lottery association, whose friendship soon became helpful and was long-continued. His partner, Story, died after seven months, and his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, was taken into the partnership instead. The firm prospered, and by 1834 Mr. Greeley again began to think of editorship. The firm now considered itself worth $3,000. With this capital and the brains of the senior partner, the “New Yorker,” the best literary weekly then in America, was founded. Shortly before its appearance James Gordon Bennett visited Mr. Greeley and proposed to unite with him in establishing a new paper to be called the “New York Herald.” In declining, Mr. Greeley recommended another partner, who accepted and continued the partnership with Bennett until the “Herald” office was burned, when he retired. The “New Yorker” appeared on 22 March, 1834, sold one hundred copies of its first number, and for three months scarcely increased its circulation from this point over one hundred copies a week. By September, however, it had risen to 2,500. At the end of a year it was 4,500, at the end of the second year 7,000, and of the third 9,500. It was steadily popular with the press and people, and steadily unsuccessful pecuniarily. The first year showed a loss of $3,000, the second year of $2,000 more, and the third year of a further $2,000. Mr. Greeley became widely known and respected as its editor, was able to add to his income by furnishing editorials to the “Daily Whig” and other journals, and within four years had attained such prominence that the tow-headed printer who was mistaken for a runaway apprentice and dismissed from the “Evening Post” office, because the proprietors wished to have “at least decent looking men at the cases,” was selected by William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed as the best man available for the conduct of a campaign paper, which they desired to publish at Albany, to be called the “Jeffersonian.” He continued his work on the “New Yorker,” but went back and forth between New York and Albany each week. The “Jeffersonian,” for a campaign paper, was unusually quiet, calm, and instructive; but it seems to have given the Whig central committee satisfaction, and it still further brought its editor to the notice of the press and of influential men throughout the state. The “Jeffersonian” lasted until the spring of 1839, and Mr. Greeley was paid a salary of $1,000 for conducting it. A few months later the country entered upon the extraordinary popular excitements attending the presidential canvass of 1840, and when Mr. Greeley, prompt to seize the opportunity, issued simultaneously at New York and Albany, under the firm-name of “H. Greeley & Co.,” the first number of a new campaign paper called the “Log Cabin,” it sprang at once into a remarkable circulation; 20,000 copies of the first issue were printed, and this was thought to be an extravagant supply; but it was speedily exhausted. Other editions were called for, and finally, the type having been distributed, the number had to be reset, and in all 48,000 copies were sold. In a few weeks 60,000 subscriptions had been received, and the advance did not cease until the weekly issue had risen to between 80,000 and 90,000 copies — a circulation then absolutely unprecedented. The “Log Cabin” was a vivacious political journal, much more aggressive than the “Jeffersonian” had been, and displaying many of the personal peculiarities of its editor, his quaintness, his homely common sense, and an extraordinary capacity for compact and pungent statement. It printed rough caricatures of Van Buren and other Democrats, gave a good deal of campaign poetry, with music attached, and yet made room for lectures upon the “Elevation of the Laboring Classes.” In all the heat and fury of that turbulent campaign its editor set in one respect an example of moderation not always followed in contests of a much later date. In answer to a correspondent he said flatly: “ Articles assailing the personal character of Mr. Van Buren or any of his supporters cannot be published in the 'Log Cabin.'” Meantime, Mr. Greeley was widely consulted, was appointed on campaign committees, asked to make speeches, and called hither and thither to aid in adjusting political differences. He had become a person of influence and a political factor. He continued his paper for one week after the term promised, in order to send to his readers a complete account of the victory, the election of General Harrison as president, with as full returns of the vote as possible. After an interval of a few weeks it was resumed as a family political paper, and continued until it was able, on 3 April, 1841, to announce that “on Saturday, April 10th instant, the subscriber will publish the first number of a new morning journal of politics, literature, and general intelligence. 'The Tribune,' as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the people and to promote their moral, social, and political well-being. The immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements, and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside. Horace Greeley, 30 Ann Street.”

Until this time Mr. Greeley had acquired great reputation, but no money. In spite of the brilliant success of the “Log Cabin,” and the general esteem for the “New Yorker,” neither had ever been profitable, and their editor, always talked of as “able, but queer,” began also to be recognized as lacking in business qualifications. He gave credit profusely, loaned money when he had it to almost any applicant, made his paper sometimes too good for the popular demand, and had no faculty for advertising his own wares. Once, when admitting that his paper was not profitable, he frankly said: “ Since the 'New Yorker' was first issued, seven copartners in its publication have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to prove lucrative to its proprietors. 'You don't humbug enough' has been the complaint of more than one of our retiring associates; 'You ought to make more noise, and vaunt your own merits. The world will never believe you print a good paper unless you tell them so.' Our course has not been changed by these representations.”

Mr. Greeley, although eccentric enough in his appearance and habits, had thus far developed but few eccentricities of thought. He was temperate almost to the verge of total abstinence, partly, no doubt, from taste, partly also, perhaps, from his observations on the intemperate habits common about his father's early home in New Hampshire. He was opposed to slavery, but rather deprecated northern interference: approved of the Colonization, and opposed anti-slavery societies at the north. He believed prohibition impracticable, but was warmly in favor of high license. He was vehemently in favor of a protective tariff, and always, as he expressed it, “an advocate of the interests of unassuming industry.” He had been captivated by vegetarian notions, and was for a short time an inmate of a Grahamite boarding-house. There he met Miss Cheney, a young teacher from Connecticut, who was making a short stay in New York, on her way to North Carolina. She was a highly nervous, excitable person, full of ideas, prone to “isms.” and destined to have a strong and not always helpful influence on his life. He continued the acquaintance by correspondence, became engaged, married her in North Carolina, and made a short wedding-journey, of which his first visit to Washington was the principal feature. About the same period he contributed a good many verses to the “Log Cabin” — “Historic Pencillings,” “Nero's Tomb,” “Fantasies,” “On the Death of William Wirt,” etc. They are not destitute of poetic feeling, but in later years he was never glad to have them recalled. In 1859, learning that Robert Bonner, of the “New York Ledger,” proposed to include them among representative poems in a volume to be made up from authors not appearing in Charles A. Dana's “Household Book of Poetry,” Mr. Greeley wrote: “Mr. Bonner, be good enough — you must — to exclude me from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein, no right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was (in expression), and never shall be. True, I wrote some verses in my callow days, as I suppose most persons who can make intelligible pen-marks have done; but I was never a poet, even in the mists of deluding fancy. . . . Within the last ten years I have been accused of all possible and some impossible offences against good taste, good morals, and the common weal; I have been branded aristocrat, communist, infidel, hypocrite, demagogue, disunionist, traitor, corruptionist, and so forth, and so forth, but cannot remember that any one has flung in my face my youthful transgressions in the way of rhyme. . . . Let the dead rest! and let me enjoy the reputation, which I covet and deserve, of knowing poetry from prose, which the ruthless resurrection of my verses would subvert, since the unobserving majority would blindly infer that I considered them poetry.”

In establishing the “Tribune,” Mr. Greeley had considerable reputation, wide acquaintance among newspaper men and practical politicians, one thousand dollars in money borrowed from James Coggeshall, and the promise from another source of a thousand more, which was never realized. He had employed, some time before, at $8 a week, a young man fresh from the University of Vermont. This young man, Henry J. Raymond, now became his chief assistant in the conduct of the new paper, and gradually a considerable force of people of similar fitness gathered about him, the paper always having an attraction for men of intellect and scholarly tastes. In the early years it thus enjoyed the services of George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Albert Brisbane, Bayard Taylor, Count Gurowski, and others. Of its first number, 5,000 copies were printed, and, as Mr. Greeley said, “with difficulty given away.” About 600 subscribers had been procured through the exertions of his personal and political friends. Being published at first at one cent a copy, it was regarded as a serious rival by the cheap papers, and the “Sun” especially undertook to interfere with its circulation by forbidding its newsboys to sell the new paper. The public considered this unfair, and the “Tribune” was greatly helped. In four weeks it reached a circulation of 6,000; in four weeks more its circulation had risen to the limit of the press, being between 11,000 and 12,000. Its business management was chaotic, but by July the chances for a permanent success were so clear that Thomas McElrath, a business man of excellent standing, was taken in as an equal partner. A weekly issue was projected, and on 20 September the “New Yorker” and the “Log Cabin” were merged in the first number of “The New York Weekly Tribune,” which soon attained considerable circulation and ultimately became a great political and social force in rural communities, particularly in the period of the anti-slavery discussion prior to and during the war for the Union. From this time forward Mr. Greeley's business prosperity was secure, but the “Tribune” might easily have been far more successful from the mere money point of view if its editor had been less outspoken and indifferent to the light in which the New York public might regard his opinions. The controlling influences in the city were then largely favorable to free-trade; but he made the “Tribune”\ aggressively protectionist. A commercial community was necessarily conservative, but the “Tribune” soon came to be everywhere regarded as radical. New York had close business connections with the south, but the “Tribune” gradually became more and more explicit in its anti-slavery utterances. The prevailing religious faith among the better educated classes was orthodox; Mr. Greeley connected himself almost from the outset with a Universalist Church. He aimed always to practise the utmost hospitality toward new ideas and their exponents, so that people soon talked of the “isms” of the “Tribune.” Sympathizing profoundly with workingmen, he was led constantly to schemes for bettering their condition, and became interested in the theories of Fourier. Before the “Tribune” was a year old he had discussed the subject of “Fourierism in France” in an article beginning thus: “We have written something, and shall yet write much more, in illustration and advocacy of the great social revolution which our age is destined to commence, in rendering all useful labor at once attractive and honorable, and banishing want and all consequent degradation from the globe. The germ of this revolution is developed in the writings of Charles Fourier.” In March, 1842, he began publishing, under a contract with a number of New York Fourierites, one column daily on the first page of the “Tribune” on Fourierite topics, from the pen of Albert Brisbane. The theories here advanced were also occasionally defended in the editorial columns. Mr. Greeley became a subscriber to one or two Fourierite associations, notably that of the “American Phalanx” at Red Bank, New Jersey, and occasionally addressed public meetings on the subject. When the famous Brook Farm experiment was abandoned, its chief, George Ripley, sought employment on the “Tribune,” and was soon its literary editor. Another of its members, Charles A. Dana, became in time the “Tribune's” managing editor. Another, Margaret Fuller, contributed literary work and occasional editorials, and lived in Mr. Greeley's family; and another, George William Curtis, was also employed. In 1846 Henry J. Raymond, who had now, owing to some disagreement, left the “Tribune” and become a leading editor on the “Courier and Enquirer,” saw that Fourierism offered an inviting point for attack upon the “Tribune.” Mr. Greeley, whose conduct of the paper was always argumentative and pugnacious, responded to some criticism by challenging Mr. Raymond to a thorough discussion of the whole subject, in a series of twelve articles and replies, to be published in full in all the editions of each paper. Mr. Raymond accepted, and made therein his first wide reputation in New York. Mr. Greeley's articles were undoubtedly able, but he was not so adroit a fencer as his opponent, and he had the unpopular side. The discussion left on the public mind the impression that Mr. Raymond was the victor, and the Fourierite movement from that date began its decline in America. Mr. Greeley was always careful to mark his dissent from many of Fourier's propositions. In the discussion Mr. Raymond endeavored to force him into the position that no man can rightfully own land (substantially the doctrine of which Henry George has since been the apostle), but Mr. Greeley indignantly repudiated it. In later years he dwelt upon the principle of association as the only one in Fourier's scheme that particularly attracted him; and in the form of co-operation among working-men this always received his zealous support.

The rappings and alleged spiritual manifestations of the Fox sisters at Rochester early attracted attention in the “Tribune,” and were fairly described and discussed without absolute incredulity. In 1848, at Mrs. Greeley's invitation, the Fox sisters spent some time in his family as his guests. He listened attentively to what they said, inquired with interest into details, but hesitated to accept the doctrine of actual spiritual communications, and at any rate failed, he said, to see that any good came of them. Nevertheless, the open-minded readiness that he displayed in investigating this, like any other new subject presented to him, led to his identification for some time in the public mind with the spiritualistic movement, so that as effective a weapon as could be used against the “Tribune” in commercial and conservative New York was to call it a Fourierite and spiritualistic organ. With all his radicalism, however, there were two subjects on which, then and throughout life, he was steadily conservative. He constantly defended the sanctity and permanence of the family relation, and protested against anything in legislation or public practice tending to break down the sanction of the Sabbath as a day of rest.

Meanwhile, the “Tribune” prospered moderately and almost continuously, and if Mr. Greeley had not been hopelessly incapable in business mailers, should soon have placed him in a position of comfortable independence. In twenty-four years it invested from its earnings $382,000 in real estate and machinery, and divided among its owners a sum equal to an annual average of over $50,000. But Mr. Greeley inherited his father's tendency to reckless indorsements for his friends, was readily imposed upon by adventurers, and found it easier to give a dollar to every applicant than to inquire into his deserts. In spite of an income liberal for those days, he was thus often in serious straits for money, and lived in an extremely plain if not always economical fashion. Presently, as his property became more valuable, he contracted the habit of raising money for immediate necessities by parting with some of it. After it was clear to practical men that the “Tribune” was a success, he sold half of it to Thomas McElrath for $2,000. By the time it was seven years old he owned less than a third of it. In 1860 his interest was reduced to three twentieths, in 1868 to less than one tenth, and by 1872 he actually owned only six shares out of the hundred into which the property was then divided. Meantime, though always hampered by his business ideas, the property had advanced in value until in 1867 he was able to sell at $6,500 a share, and his last sale was at $9,600. The price of the daily “Tribune” was kept at one cent until the beginning of its second volume, when it was advanced to two cents for a single number, or nine cents a week. It then had 12,000 subscribers, and did not lose 200 of them by the increase in price. A year later it had reached a circulation of 20,000, and advertisements were so numerous that frequent supplements were issued. After a time the price was again advanced to three cents, and finally to four. The circulation rose to a steady average of 35,000 to 40,000, and there were periods of extraordinary interest, especially during the Civil War, when for months it reached from 60,000 to 65,000. The weekly edition, being free then from competition, with strong weekly issues in the inland cities, gained a wide circulation throughout the entire north, being probably more generally read for some years in the northern states and territories than any other one newspaper. During political canvasses it sometimes reached a total circulation of a quarter of a million copies, and often for years ranged steadily above 100,000 copies a week. A semi-weekly edition was begun for the benefit of weekly readers enjoying mail facilities that led them to want their news oftener, and this edition ultimately attained a steady circulation of from 15,000 to 20,000 copies.

First Whig, then Anti-slavery Whig, then Republican, the “Tribune's” political course was generally in accord with the more popular and aggressive tendency of these parties. But it was also a highly individualized journal, constantly representing many opinions advocated by its editor irrespective of party affiliations, and sometimes against them. He held that the worst use any man could be put to was to hang him, and for many years vehemently opposed capital punishment. He favored the movement for educating women as physicians, and sought in many ways to widen the sphere of their employments. But he opposed woman suffrage unless it could be first shown that the majority of women themselves desired it. He assailed repudiation in every form, north or south, and was the bitterest critic of the repudiating states. In practice a total abstinent, he always favored the repression of the liquor traffic, and, where possible, its prohibition. He did not believe prohibition possible in states like New York, and there he favored high license and local option. He thought popular education had been directed too much toward literary rather than practical ends, and earnestly favored the substitution of scientific for classical studies. He gave the first newspaper reports of popular lectures by Professor Louis Agassiz and other eminent scientists; but he thought ill of theatres, and in the early days of the “Tribune” would not insert their advertisements. He encouraged the discussion of a reformed spelling; but, while allowing the phonetic system to be commended in his columns, refused to adopt it. He gave much space to accounts of all co-operative movements among laborers, and sought to encourage co-operation in America as a surer protection for labor than trades-unionism. He sought to remain on good terms with the latter, and even accepted the first presidency of Typographical Union No. 6; but when subsequently, under this union, a strike was ordered in his office to prevent the insertion of an advertisement for printers by a rival paper, he gave notice that thenceforward he would tolerate no trades-union meddling, should mind his own business, and require them to mind theirs. He was a warm friend to every movement in behalf of the Irish people, and particularly for the restoration to them of a greater measure of self-government. He advocated judicious but liberal appropriations for internal improvements, and was conspicuous in urging government aid for the construction of the first Pacific Railroad. He strove to diffuse knowledge of the west and promote its settlement, giving much space to descriptions of different localities, and making removal to the west his panacea for all sorts of misfortune and ill-luck in the east. He actively encouraged one of his agricultural editors to establish a colony in Colorado on land that could be cultivated only by irrigation, and was proud that the successful town founded by this colony was called by his name, and that its first newspaper bore as its title the “Greeley Tribune.” in an enlarged facsimile of his own handwriting. He had personally a great fondness for farming, but little success at it, though he derived great comfort and recreation from his experiments on the farm that he bought at Chappaqua, thirty-three miles north of New York, where his family resided in the summer, and where for many years he spent his Saturdays chopping down or trimming his trees, and occasionally assisting at other farm labor. He favored an international copyright. He constantly watched for new men in literature, was one of the first editors in America to recognize the rising genius of Dickens, and copied a sketch by “Boz” in the first issue of his first newspaper. He was one of the earliest in the east to discover Bret Harte, and perhaps the earliest to recognize Swinburne. He held frequent public discussions — one with Samuel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin on protection, another with Robert Dale Owen on marriage and divorce. He frequently addressed, in his editorial columns, open letters to distinguished public men, promptly printed replies if any came, and was apt to follow these with a telling rejoinder. Thurlow Weed, Benjamin P. Butler, Oliver P. Morton, John J. Crittenden, Samuel J. Tilden, and many others, were thus singled out. He was fond of taking readers into his confidence. Thus he published details of his experiments in farming, and printed serially a charming autobiography. He announced his intended movements, particularly his trips to Europe and through the west. The latter proved an ovation, especially in the territories and in California. Being arrested once in Paris as a director of the American world's fair, at the suit of a disappointed French exhibitor, he published a graphic and amusing account of his imprisonment in Clichy. He admired Fenimore Cooper, and yet was involved in the series of libel suits instituted by that novelist, through a letter (written by Thurlow Weed) published anonymously in the “Tribune”; whereupon he pleaded his own case, and promptly published an amusing report of the trial and the adverse verdict. Sometimes, especially in discussion, he was less good-humored. In an angry letter to a state officer about some public documents advertised in the New York “Times,” he referred to its editor as “that little villain, Raymond.” Replying to a charge against him by the “Evening Post” of some corrupt association with the slave interest, he began, “You lie, villain, wilfully, wickedly, basely lie.” A subscriber in Aurora, New York, discontinued his newspaper on the ground of Greeley 's opposition to William H. Seward, and angrily said his only regret in parting was that he was under the necessity of losing a three-cent stamp to do it. Greeley published the letter with this reply: “ The painful regret expressed in yours of the 19th inst. excites my sympathies. I enclose you a three-cent stamp to replace that whose loss you deplored, and remain, Yours placidly.” Quaint letters like this, the oddities of his excessively crabbed handwriting, peculiarities of dress, his cravat (apt to be awry), his white coat, his squeaky voice, his shuttling manner, came to be universally known, and only seemed to add to the personal fondness with which his readers and a large portion of the general public regarded him. He became, in spite of almost every oratorical defect, a popular speaker, always in demand, and always greeted with the loudest applause on whatever occasion, social, educational, reformatory, or political, he appeared. As early as January, 1843, he was announced as a lecturer on the subject of “Human Life,” the advertisement being accompanied with the request, “If those who care to hear will sit near the desk, they will favor the lecturer's weak and husky voice.” He was afterward able to make this weak and husky voice heard by mass meetings of thousands, and by the delivery of lectures throughout the west he often more than doubled in a winter the annual salary that he received from the “Tribune.” But he went, whenever he could, wherever he was asked, whether paid or not. He was always ready to write for other people's papers, too, sometimes for pay, because he needed the money, but almost as readily without it, because he craved new audiences.

In 1848 he was elected to the National House of Representatives, to fill a vacancy for three mouths. Regarding as an abuse the methods then pursued by Congressmen in charging mileage, he published a list of the members' mileage accounts. This caused great indignation, which was heightened by the free comments on Congressional proceedings contributed daily to the “Tribune” over his signature. Thus he said that if either house “had a chaplain who dared preach of the faithlessness, neglect of duty, iniquitous waste of time, and robbery of the public by Congressmen, there would be some sense in the chaplain business; but any ill-bred Nathan or Elijah who should undertake such a job would be kicked out in short order.” He broke down the mileage abuse. He also introduced the first bill giving homesteads, free, to actual settlers on the public lands. In 1861 he was a candidate for U.S. Senator against William M. Evarts, defeating Evarts, but being defeated in turn by the combination between Evarts's supporters and a few men favoring Ira Harris, of Albany, who was elected. In 1864 he was one of the Republican presidential electors. In 1867 his friends again put him forward for the Senate, but his candor in needlessly restating the views he held on general amnesty, then very unpopular, made his election impossible. The same year he was chosen delegate-at-large to the convention for revising the state constitution. At first he took great interest in the proceedings, but grew weary of the endless talk, and finally refused either to attend the body or draw his salary. Two years later he was made the Republican candidate for state comptroller, at a time when the election of the ticket was known to be hopeless, and in 1870 he was again nominated for Congress by the Republicans in a hopelessly Democratic District, where he reduced the adverse majority about 1,700, and ran largely ahead of the Republican candidate for governor. On the death of Charles G. Halpine (“Miles O'Reilly”), he accepted an appointment to the city office that Halpine had held, and discharged the duties gratuitously, turning over the salary to Colonel Halpine's widow. With one notable exception, this completes his career as office-holder or candidate for office.

Mr. Greeley's hostility to slavery grew stronger from the beginning of his editorial career. In 1848 he was intense in opposition to the Mexican War, on the ground that it was intended to secure more slave territory. In 1852 he sympathized with the Free-Soil movement, and disapproved of the Whig platform — “spat upon it,” as he said editorially — but nevertheless supported the Whig candidate, General Winfield Scott, because he thought that better than, by supporting a ticket that he knew could not be elected, to risk the success of the Democrats. In 1856 he was an enthusiastic supporter of John C. Frémont, and during the next four or five years may be said to have been the chief inspiration and greatest popular leader in the movement that carried the Republican party into power. He was indicted in Virginia in 1856 for circulating incendiary documents — viz., the “Tribune.” Postmasters in many places in the south refused to deliver the paper at all, and persons subscribing for it were sometimes threatened with lynching. Congressman Albert Rust made a personal assault upon him in Washington, and no northern name provoked at the south more constant and bitter denunciation. Throughout the Kansas-Nebraska excitement the “Tribune” was constantly at a white heat, and its voluminous correspondence and ringing editorials greatly stimulated the northern movement that made Kansas a free state. Still, he favored only legal and constitutional methods for opposing the aggressions of slavery, and brought upon himself the hostility of the Garrison and Wendell Phillips abolitionists, who always distrusted him and often stigmatized him as cowardly and temporizing.

Up to this time the popular judgment regarded Seward, Weed, and Greeley as the great Republican triumvirate. But in 1854 Mr. Greeley had addressed a highly characteristic letter to Governor Seward complaining that Seward and Weed had sometimes used their political power to his detriment, and shown no consideration for his difficulties, while some of Seward's friends thought Greeley an obstacle to the governor's advancement. Having labored to secure a legislature that would send Mr. Seward to the U. S. Senate, it seemed to him “a fitting time to announce the dissolution of the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley by the withdrawal of the junior partner.” The letter showed that the writer was hurt, but it was not unfriendly in tone, and it ended thus: “You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your profession; let me close with the assurance that these will be ever gratefully remembered by Yours, Horace Greeley.” Governor Seward's friends claimed that on account of Greeley's disappointment as an office-seeker, as shown in this private letter, he had resolved to prevent Seward's nomination for the presidency in 1860. Mr. Greeley denied this emphatically, but declared that he did not think the nomination advisable, and that in opposing Seward he discharged a public duty, in utter disregard of personal considerations. At any rate, he did oppose him successfully. The Seward men prevented his reaching the National Convention as a delegate from New York; but he secured a seat as delegate from Oregon in place of an absentee, and made such an effectual opposition to Mr. Seward that he may fairly be said to have brought about the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In the canvass that followed, the “Tribune” was still a great national force. Immediately after the election Mr. Greeley said: “If my advice should be asked respecting Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, I should recommend the appointment of Seward as secretary of state. It is the place for him, and he will do honor to the country in it.”

When the Civil War approached, Mr. Greeley at first shrank from it. He hoped, he said, never to live in a Union whereof one section was pinned to the other by bayonets. But after the attack on Fort Sumter and the uprising at the north he urged the most vigorous prosecution of the war, to the end that it might be short. He chafed at the early delays, and the columns of his paper carried for weeks a stereotyped paragraph, “On to Richmond!” demanding the speediest advance of the National armies. Rival newspapers hastened in consequence to hold him responsible for the disaster at Bull Run, and his horror at the calamity, and sensitiveness under the attacks, for a time completely prostrated him. He subsequently replied to his critics in an editorial, which became famous, headed “Just Once,” wherein he defended the demands for aggressive action, though denying that the “On to Richmond” paragraph was his, and saying he would have preferred not to iterate it. Henceforth he would bar all criticism on army movements in his paper “unless somebody should undertake to prove that General Patterson is a wise and brave commander.” If there was anything to be said in Patterson's behalf, he would make an exception in his favor. He continued to support the war with all possible vigor, encourage volunteering, and sustain the drafts, meantime making more and more earnest appeals that the cause of the war — slavery — should be abolished. Finally he addressed to President Lincoln a powerful letter on the editorial page of the “Tribune.” which he entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” He made in it an impassioned appeal for the liberty of all slaves whom the armies could reach, and said: “On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion, and at the same time uphold its inciting cause, are preposterous and futile; that the rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if slavery were left in full vigor; that army officers who remain to this day devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union; and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union. I appeal to the testimony of your ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slave-holding, slavery-upholding interest is not the perplexity, the despair of statesmen and of parties; and be admonished by the general answer.” This appeal made a profound impression upon the country, and drew from the president within two days one of his most characteristic and remarkable letters, likewise published in the “Tribune.” Mr. Lincoln, after saying that “if there be perceptible in it [Mr. Greeley's letter] an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right,” continued: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. . . . What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere should be free.” The emancipation proclamation was issued within a month after this correspondence.

In 1864 Mr. Greeley became convinced that the rebels were nearer exhaustion than was thought, and that by a little diplomacy they could be led into propositions for surrender. He accordingly besought the president to send someone to confer with alleged Confederate commissioners in Canada. Mr. Lincoln finally sent Mr. Greeley himself, subsequently dispatching one of his private secretaries, Colonel John Hay, to the spot to watch the proceedings. It was found that the so-called commissioners had not sufficient authority. The negotiations failed, and Mr. Greeley's share in the business brought upon him more censure than it deserved. As soon as the surrender did come he was eager for universal amnesty and impartial suffrage, and he thought the treatment of Jefferson Davis a mistake. When, after imprisonment and delay, the government still failed to bring Mr. Davis to trial, Mr. Greeley visited Richmond and in the open court-room signed his bail-bond. This act provoked a storm of public censure. He had been writing a careful history of the Civil War under the title of “The American Conflict.” The first volume had an unprecedented sale, and he had realized from it far more than from all his other occasional publications combined. The second volume was just out, and its sale was ruined, thousands of subscribers to the former volume refusing to take it. On the movement of George W. Blunt, an effort was made in the Union League club to expel Mr. Greeley. This roused him to a white heat. He refused to attend the meeting, and addressed to the president of the club one of his best letters. “I shall not attend your meeting this evening. . . . I do not recognize you as capable of judging or even fully apprehending me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great enduring party on the heat and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody Civil War is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will recollect my going to Richmond and signing the bail-bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end by a brave, frank, manly way. Don't sidle off into a mild resolution of censure, but move the expulsion which you purposed and which I deserve if I deserve any reproach whatever. . . . I propose to fight it out on the line that I have held from the day of Lee's surrender. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our government, he was my enemy; from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman.” The meeting was held, but the effort at any censure whatever failed.

Mr. Greeley did not greatly sympathize with the movement to make the foremost soldier of the war president in 1868, but he gave General Grant a cordial support. He chafed at the signs of inexperience in some of the early steps of the administration, and later at its manifest disposition to encourage, in New York, chiefly the wing of the Republican Party that had been unfriendly to himself. He disapproved of General Grant's scheme for acquiring Santo Domingo, and was indignant at the treatment of Charles Sumner and John Lothrop Motley. The course of the “carpet-bag” state governments at the south, however, gave him most concern, and brought him into open hostility to the administration he had helped to create. In 1871 he made a trip to Texas, was received everywhere with extraordinary cordiality, and returned still more outspoken against the policy of the government toward the states lately in rebellion. Dissatisfied Republicans now began to speak freely of him as a candidate for the presidency against General Grant. Numbers of the most distinguished Republicans in the Senate and elsewhere combined in the formation of the Liberal Republican Party, and called a convention at Cincinnati to nominate a national ticket. Eastern Republicans, outside of New York at least, generally expected Charles Francis Adams to be the nominee, and he had the united support of the whole revenue reform and free-trade section. But Mr. Greeley soon proved stronger than any other with western and southern delegates. On the sixth ballot he received 332 votes, against 324 for Adams, a sudden concentration of the supporters of B. Gratz Brown upon Mr. Greeley having been effected. Immediate changes swelled his majority, so that when the vote was finally announced it stood: Greeley, 482; Adams, 187. In accepting the nomination, which he had not sought, but by which he was greatly gratified, Mr. Greeley made the restoration of all political rights lost in the rebellion, together with a suffrage impartially extended to white and black on the same conditions, the cardinal principle of the movement. His letter ended with this notable passage: “With the distinct understanding that, if elected, I shall be the president, not of a party, but of the whole people, I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, north and south, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are and must henceforth remain brethren.”

Mr. Greeley's nomination at first caught the popular fancy, and his canvass promised for a time to resemble that of 1840, in the enthusiastic turmoil of which he had first risen to national prominence. But, contrary to his judgment (though in accordance with that of close friends), the Democrats, instead of putting no ticket in the field, as he had expected, formally nominated him. This action of his life-long opponents alienated many ardent Republicans. The first elections were considered in his favor, and when in the summer North Carolina voted, it was believed that his friends had carried the state. The later official vote, however, gave the state to the Grant party, and from that time the Greeley wave seemed to be subsiding. At last, on appeals from his supporters, who thought extraordinary measures needful, he took the stump in person. The series of speeches made in his tour, extending from New England through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, evoked great enthusiasm. All sides regarded them as an exhibition of brilliant and effective work unprecedented in that generation. But they were not enough to stem the rising tide. Mr. Greeley received 2,834,079 of the popular vote, against General Grant's 3,597,070; but he carried none of the northern states, and of the southern states only Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.

He had always been more sensitive to attacks and reverses than the public imagined, and now the strain proved too great. The canvass had been one of extraordinary bitterness, his old associates reviling him as a turn-coat and traitor, and some of the caricatures being unparalleled for their ferocity. His wife, always feeble, and of late years suffering greatly from a combination of nervous and other diseases, fell ill while he was absent on his tour. On his return he watched almost continuously for weeks at her bedside, and he buried her in the closing weeks of the canvass. For years he had been a sufferer from insomnia; he had necessarily lost much sleep, and during and after his wife's illness he scarcely slept at all. He was not disappointed in the election, for he had known for weeks that defeat was inevitable. Nor did this act, though generally disapproved by his friends, weaken his friendships. Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “You may think, amidst clouds of smoke and dust, that all your old friends who parted company with you in the late campaign will turn a momentary difference into a life-long alienation. It will not be so. I speak for myself, and also from what I perceive in other men's hearts. Your mere political influence may for a time be impaired, but your own power for good in the far wider fields of industrial economy, social and civil criticism, and the general well-being of society, will not be lessened, but augmented.” But Mr. Greeley's nervous exhaustion resulted in an inflammation of the upper membrane of the brain. He resumed his editorial duties, but in a few days was unable to continue them. He remained sleepless, delirium soon set in, and he died on 29 November, 1872.

The personal regard in which he was held, even by his bitterest opponents, at once became manifest. His body lay in state in the city hall, and a throng of many thousands moved during every hour of the daylight through the building to see it. The president, vice-president, and chief justice of the United States, with a great number of the leading public men of both parties, attended the funeral, and followed the hearse, preceded by the mayor of the city and other civic authorities, down Fifth avenue and Broadway. John G. Whittier described him as “our later Franklin,” and the majority of his countrymen have substantially accepted that phrase as designating his place in the history of his time, while members of the press consider him perhaps the greatest editor, and certainly the foremost political advocate and controversialist, if not also the most influential popular writer, the country has produced. In 1867 Francis B. Carpenter painted a portrait of Mr. Greeley for the “Tribune” association; a larger one, executed by Alexander Davis, was exhibited in the Paris salon, afterward became the property of Whitelaw Reid, and is now (1887) in the “Tribune” counting-room. At the time of Mr. Greeley's visit to Rome, Hiram Powers made a portrait bust, and at a later date Ames Van Wart executed one in marble, on a commission from Marshall O. Roberts. The bronze bust in Greenwood cemetery was presented by the printers of the United States. John Q. A. Ward is now (1887) completing a colossal sitting figure, to be cast in bronze and placed at the entrance of the “Tribune” building. The accompanying portrait is from an excellent photograph by Bogardus. Mr. Greeley's works are “Hints Toward Reforms” (New York, 1850); “Glances at Europe” (1851); “History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension” (1856); “Overland Journey to San Francisco” (1800); “The American Conflict” (2 vols., Hartford, 1864-'6); “Recollections of a Busy Life” (New York, 1868; new ed., with appendix containing an account of his later years, his argument on marriage and divorce with Robert Dale Owen, and miscellanies, New York, 1873); “Essays on Political Economy” (Boston, 1870); and “What I Know of Farming” (New York, 1871). He also assisted his brother-in-law, John F. Cleveland, in editing “A Political Text-Book” (New York, 1860), and supervised for many years the annual issues of the “Whig Almanac” and the “Tribune Almanac.” Lives of Horace Greeley have been written by James Parton (New York, 1855; new eds., 1868, and Boston, 1872); L. U. Reavis (New York, 1872); and Lewis D. Ingersoll (Chicago, 1873). There is also a “Memorial of Horace Greeley” (New York, 1873). [Appleton’s 1900]

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, pp. 528-534:

GREELEY, HORACE (February 3, 1811-November 29, 1872), editor, political leader, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, the third child of Zaccheus Greeley and Mary Woodburn his wife, the former being of English and the latter of Scotch-Irish stock. The father made a scanty living by farming and day labor, first at Amherst, later at Westhaven, Vermont, and finally in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Greeley's irregular schooling ended at fourteen, when he was apprenticed to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator at East Poultney, Vermont. But he was a precocious lad, who gained much from his mother's repetition of British traditions, ballads, and snatches of history, the family copies of Shakespeare, Campbell, and Byron, and the omnivorous reading possible in a newspaper office and the town library of East Poultney. When the Nor them Spectator died in June 1830, he walk ed most of the way to the Erie County home, and after a short stay with his still-struggling parents found employment as a printer at Jamestown and Lodi, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. Finding his prospects poor, he set out, with about twenty-five dollars and his personal possessions tied in his handkerchief, for New York City, where he arrived in August 1831. He was twenty years old, "tall, slender, pale, and plain," as he later described himself, with an "unmistakably rustic manner and address," and equipped with only "so much of the art of printing as a boy will usually learn in the office of a country newspaper" (Recollections, p. 84). Obtaining board and room for two dollars and a half a week, he sought work in vain for several weeks before accepting the eye-ruining job of setting up a New Testament in agate with notes in pearl.

A succession of employments, including some typesetting for the Evening Post, from which William Leggett discharged him because he wanted only "decent-looking men in the office," enabled Greeley to save a small sum, and in January 1833 to form a partnership with a printer named Francis V. Story, who when drowned the following July was succeeded by Jonas Winchester. During 1833-34 the firm printed from 54 Liberty St., two lottery organs called Sylvester's Bank Note and Exchange Manual and the Constitutionalist, and did a job-printing business. But Greeley was far more than a printer. His fingers itched for the pen, and he was shortly contributing paragraphs to the two journals and to newspapers. He soon gained reputation in press circles, and a dubious tradition states that James Gordon Bennett offered him a partnership in starting the Herald. One reason for distrusting the tradition is that Greeley and Winchester had already, on March 22, 1834, found ed a weekly literary and news journal called the New Yorker. This periodical, well pri11ted, avoiding political partisanship, containing full abstracts of foreign and domestic newspapers, and selected tales, reviews, and pieces of mu sic, was edited largely with shears; but there were original contributions by Greeley, R. W. Griswold, Park Benjamin, and Henry J. Raymond (F. L. Mott, History of American Magazines, 1741-1850, 1930, pp. 358-60). It gained steadily in circulation. At the end of one year it had 4,500 subscribers; at the end of three years, 9,500. But the "cash principle" not yet being applied to the magazine business, it still lo st money. Greeley suffered great mental anguish from his constant struggle with debt. "My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful," he wrote; "not that I feared destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very bitter" (Parton, post, p. 172). He had married on July 5, 1836, Mary Youngs Cheney, who was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, but was a schoolteacher for a time in North Carolina. However great his worries over his magazine, it shortly gave him a wide reputation.

The failure of the New Yorker was fortunate for Greeley in that literary and non-partisan journalism was not his real forte. To add to his income he wrote constantly for the Daily Whig and other newspapers, and in 1838 accepted from Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward, and other Whig leaders the editors hip of a campaign weekly, the Jeffersonian. It ran for one year, obtained a circulation of 15,000 and exercised real influence. Greeley's salary of $1,000 was less important than the political friendships he formed. He struck Seward as "rather unmindful of social usages, yet singularly clear, original, and decided, in his political views and theories" (F. W. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward …with a Memoir of his Life, 1877, p. 395). In 1840 the Whig leaders called upon him to edit and publish another weekly. The result was the Log Cabin, begun May 2, which gained an unprecedented success. Of the first issue 48,000 copies were sold, and the circulation swiftly rose to almost 90,000. Greeley not only edited it and the New Yorker simultaneously, but made speeches, sat on committees, and helped manage the state campaign. He thought later that few men had contributed more to Harrison's victory than he (Recollections, p. 135). Ceasing after the election, the Log Cabin was revived on December 5, 1840, as a general political weekly, and continued till it and the New Yorker were merged in the Tribune. Greeley's apprenticeship was now completed.

Though in 1841 twelve dailies were published in New York City, no penny paper of Whig allegiance existed. Nor was there any newspaper standing midway between the sensational enterprise of Bennett's Herald and the staid correctness of Bryant's Evening Post. Greeley, now fully trusted by his party, with a large popular following and a varied practical experience, saw the opportunity. With a capital which he estimated at two thousand dollars, one-half in printing materials, and with one thousand dollars borrowed from James Coggeshall, he launched the New York Tribune on April 10, 1841. His object, he stated later, was to found "a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand, and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other" (Recollections, p. 137). For some days the prospect was dubious; his first week's receipts were ninety-two dollars, the expenses $525 (Ibid., p. 140). Then, thanks to the Tribune's sterling merits and the Sun's bitter attacks, subscriptions poured in rapidly. The paper began its fourth week with an edition of 6,000, and its seventh with 11,000, after which progress was slow, Success had been fairly assured when during July Greeley formed a partnership with a far more practical man, Thomas McElrath, who for ten years gave the establishment efficiency and system and Greeley entire independence. On September 20 the Log Cabin and New Yorker were merged into the weekly Tribune. Greeley, assisted with great ability by H. J. Raymond, labored tirelessly, his average day's writing in the early years according to Parton being three columns of close print. As funds accumulated, however, the staff was increased, till by 1846 the Tribune was the best all-round paper in the city, and Greeley had time for additional pursuits.

The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in newsgathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people and when its price was raised, on April 11, 1842, to nine cents weekly or two cents daily it lost fewer than two hundred subscribers. Greeley stamped it with his individual and then highly radical views. He was an egalitarian who hated and feared all kinds of monopoly, landlordism, and class dominance. Believing that all American citizens should be free men politically and economically, he sought means of increasing this freedom. At first he turned to Fourierism. Through the influence of Albert Brisbane [q.v.], he not only allowed a Fourierist association to publish first daily and then tri-weekly articles on the front page of the Tribune (1842-44), but also advocated the formation of Phalanxes, conducted a newspaper debate on the subject with Raymond, (1846), and invested in the North American Phalanx at Red Bank, New Jersey. He espoused the agrarian movement for the free distribution of government lands to settlers as a guarantee against capitalist tyranny, attacked the railway land grants as fostering monopoly; assailed the heartlessness of corporations which exploited their workers, and in general inveighed against the fierce acquisitive competition of the day. Wage slavery in the forties distressed him as much as bond slavery. "How can I devote myself to a crusade against distant servitude," he wrote an anti-slavery convention in 1845, "when I discern its essence pervading my immediate community" (Tribune, June 20, 1845). Newspapers, he wrote, should be "as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan." His thinking seemed inconsistent when it included high-tariff doctrines, but he never favored protection as more than a temporary means to an end. "Protection is the shortest and best way to real Free Trade, he wrote in 1851 (Tribune, June 23, 1851). He opposed capital punishment, urged freedom of speech and of the mails for Abolitionists, advocated the restriction of liquor-selling, and supported cooperative shops and labor unions, himself becoming in 1850 first president of the New York Printers' Union. Though no believer in woman's suffrage, he sympathized with other parts of the woman's rights crusade.

Greeley's devotion to such social aims made the Tribune more than a mere financial success; it became a great popular teacher, champion, and moral leader, and a vehicle for the ideas and experiments of constructive democracy. It required an able and liberal staff, and he drew to the Nassau Street office a versatile group. Margaret Fuller was literary reviewer and special writer from 1844 to 1846, living for a time in Greeley's Turtle Bay home. Charles A. Dana joined Greeley in 1847, acting as city editor, foreign correspondent, and managing editor. Bayard Taylor, after contributing travel letters, became a staff member in 1848. George Ripley was made literary assistant in 1849, raising the literary department to high influence. In the fifties the staff included James S. Pike, Washington correspondent and editorial writer; Solon Robinson, agricultural editor; W. H. Fry, music critic; C. T. Congdon and Richard Hildreth. To the energy of Dana, Pike, and the city editor, F. J. Ottarson, the paper owed its prompt and full intelligence. By 1854 it employed fourteen local reporters, twenty American correspondents, eighteen foreign correspondents, and a financial staff under George M. Snow (Parton, pp. 391-4u). During the late fifties the Tribune attained a national influence far surpassing that of any rival. Its total circulation on the eve of the Civil War, daily, weekly, and semi-weekly, was 287,750. This covered the whole country outside the South. The power of the paper was greater than even this circulation would indicate, for the weekly was the preeminent journal of the rural North, and one copy did service for many readers. As James Ford Rhodes has said, for great areas the Tribune was "a political bible." Many elements entered into its influence, but the greatest was the passionate moral earnestness of Greeley himself, his ability to interpret the deeper convictions of the Northern public, and the trenchant clarity and force of his editorials.

The effort which the Tribune had expended in the forties on numerous causes was concentrated in the fifties upon the Free-Soil movement. Greeley objected to slavery on both moral and economic grounds. At first he held mild views, but his opinions underwent a steady intensification. He opposed the Mexican War, indorsed the Wilmot Proviso, and in 1848 supported Zachary Taylor as the only candidate who could prevent Cass's election to the presidency. Two years later he showed coolness to the compromise measures, declaring to the South that he would let "the Union be a thousand times shivered rather than that we should aid you to plant slavery on free soil" (Tribune, February 20, 1850). The fight over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill aroused Greeley to his greatest eloquence. His editorial, "Is It a Fraud?" (February 15, 1854), was a magnificent answer to the Democratic claim that the measures of 1850 had involved a recognized repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He advocated "determined resistance" to the execution of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and assisted Gerrit Smith, Eli Thayer, and others in arming the Kansas Free-Soilers. He applauded forcible resistance to the Fugitive-Slave Act as the best method of obtaining its repeal (June 3, 1854). Having declared in 1852 that "if an anti-slavery Whig must give up his anti-slavery or his Whiggery, we choose to part with the latter," Greeley was among the first editors to join the Republican party, and attended the national organization meeting at Pittsburgh, February 22, 1856. He was disgusted with Seward because he failed to seize the leadership of the " uprising of the Free States" (Tribune, November 9, 1854), and warm in his advocacy of Fremont's candidacy for the presidency. In the critical year 1857 his union of moral fervor with shrewd practicality is seen at its best. Of the Dred Scott decision he said, it "is entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room" (Tribune, March 7, 1857), and he praised John Brown while condemning his raid. He insisted, however, upon the importance of the Union, showing no patience with Garrison's secessionist views, and he strongly attacked Know-Nothingism. He sought only the attainable. In 1854 he had dissolved, through political pique, his alliance with Thurlow Weed and Seward, and in 1860 was a free agent. As a delegate from Oregon at the Republican National Convention he joined with the Blairs to defeat Seward by urging the nomination of Edward Bates of Missouri, but on the night before the balloting advised the Massachusetts delegates to support Lincoln.

In these decades Greeley's restless energy was expended in numerous directions, some ill-advised. Though not of rugged health, he seemed indefatigable, sleeping but five or six hours daily, writing much, traveling widely, making speeches, and attending political conferences. For three months in 1848-49 he was a member of Congress, where he introduced a homestead bill and aired the scandal of excessive mileage payments. During 1851 he was in Europe for three months, acting as juryman at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, testifying before a parliamentary committee, and hastily touring the Continent. On entering Italy his first observation was characteristic that the country badly needed subsoil ploughs. Revisiting Europe in 1855, he derived much amusement from a two days' incarceration on a debt charge in a Paris prison. In the summer of 1859 he made a journey to the Pacific Coast, toured California, and returned by way of Panama. These travels furnished material for newspaper letters and the volumes, Glances at Europe (1851) and An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in -----the Summer of 1859 (1860). In addition to these writings he published a volume of lectures called Hints Toward Reforms (1850), and edited a compilation from official records entitled History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension or Restriction in the United States (1856). For years he was a constant lecturer before lyceums, young men's associations, and rural groups, appearing in some winter seasons twice a week. Far less creditable was his thirst for political office. He would have welcomed reelection to Congress in 1850, would have stooped to take the lieutenant-governorship in 1854, and in 1861 was bitterly disappointed by his failure to secure Seward's seat in the United States Senate. In 1863, again a candidate for the Senate, he was again defeated by Thurlow Weed's opposition. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the House of Representatives in 1868 and 1870, and for the state comptrollership in 1869, but won a seat in the state constitutional convention of 1867. These political adventures by no means enhanced his dignity or influence.

Few Americans were more intimately in the public eye than he, and none commanded such a mixture of admiration with affectionate amusement. The oddity of his appearance, with his pink face of babylike mildness fringed by throat-whiskers, his broad-brimmed hat, white overcoat, crooked cravat, shapeless trousers, and white socks, his shambling gait and absent-minded manner, was exaggerated by every caricaturist. His squeaky voice and illegible handwriting became themes of familiar humor. His eccentricities of manner, which sometimes shocked precise men like Bryant, his naivete on many subjects, and his homely wisdom on others, appealed to the millions. Some of his phrases, like "Go West, young man," were universally current. By signing many editorials and by frequently appearing in public he gave his work a direct personal appeal unusual in journalism, and his private life was the subject of much curiosity. He cared nothing for money, and though in later years he received $10,000 annually, this and most of his Tribune stock slipped from him. His charities were endless, and some impostors received thousands of dollars from him (Proceedings at the Unveiling of a Memorial to Horace Greeley, 1915, p. 95). Buying in 1853 a fifty-four acre farm in Chappaqua, New York, he spent many week-ends there, interesting all Tribune readers in his swamp reclamation and crop experiments, and finally publishing What I Know of Farming (1871). Of the seven children born to him, only two daughters, Gabrielle and Ida, lived to maturity; the bereavements made Mrs. Greeley neurasthenic; her housekeeping was characterized by Margaret Fuller as "Castle Rackrent fashion"; and though Greeley's devotion never wavered, his home life was comfortless. He made and kept many friends, especially among women who, like the Cary sisters and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, valued him for his inner and not outer qualities.

The Civil War brought Greeley new tests of sagacity and firmness, which he failed to meet as creditably as he did all tests of courage and patriotism. From the beginning he was accused of vacillation, though his position had more consistency than appeared on the surface. His primary demand was that no concessions be made to slavery. He sternly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, preferred disunion to any "complicity in slavery extension," and, once hostilities opened, regarded the extinction of slavery as an irrevocable object. His doctrine in 1861 was that if a real majority of Southerners wished to go from the Union they should be allowed to do so, but that the revolt was one of "a violent, unscrupulous, desperate minority, who have conspired to clutch power" (Recollections, p. 398; Tribune, November 9, 16, 1860; November 19, 1861). When war began he supported it with energy, though the unfortunate cry, "Forward to Richmond!" (June 28, 1861), was raised by Dana, not by Greeley. He quickly allied himself with the radical anti-slavery element led by Sumner, Stevens, and Chase, opposing the President's policy of conciliating the border states and demanding early emancipation. Though other newspapers accepted the modification of Fremont's emancipation order, Greeley did not, insisting that Congress or the President resort to a general liberation of slaves. His editorial on emancipation, "The question of the Day" (Tribune, December 11, 1861), declared that "rebels" should have been warned at the outset that they would lose their slaves, that they had no rights to consideration, and that t)1e Union could not "afford to repel the sympathies and reject the aid of Four Millions of Southern people." His rising impatience with Lincoln's policy culminated in his famous signed editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" (August 20, 1862). This arraigned Lincoln as remiss in executing the Confiscation Act, as unduly influenced by "certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States" (the Blairs), and as offering a "mistaken deference to Rebel slavery." On September 24 the Tribune hailed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as recreating a nation. Greeley's radicalism involved his journal in bitter warfare with not only the Democrats but also with the Seward-Weed moderates, and the fight, extended to state politics. In 1862 he was acclaimed the principal leader of New York Republicans, but his poor judgment of men and fluctuating principles caused him to lose influence in political circles (De A. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, III, 1909, p. 91).

Greeley's popular reputation and influence were injured in 1864 by his hesitation to support Lincoln and in 1864-65 by his peace activities. He favored postponing the Republican National Convention on the ground that the party was not united behind Lincoln (letter to New York Independent, February 25, 1864), and declared that Chase, Fremont, Ben Butler, or Grant would make as good a president, while the nomination of any of them would preserve the salutary one-term principle (Tribune, February 23, 1864). As late as August 18 he believed that Lincoln was already beaten, and wrote a friend that " we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow" (New York Sun, June 30, 1889). Not until September 6 did he state in the Tribune that "we fly the banner of Abraham Lincoln for the next Presidency," one dubious story asserting that this announcement followed Lincoln's private differ to appoint Greeley his next postmaster-general.

Even more ill-advised was Greeley's course in regard to peace. During 1863 he advocated mediation by a foreign power, and communicated on the subject with C. L. Vallandigham and the French minister, telling Raymond, " I'll drive Lincoln into it" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the Unite d States, 1893, IV, 222). In July 1864, he attempted to bring about direct peace negotiations. He wrote to Lincoln that he had learned that two emissaries from Jefferson Davis were in Canada with "full and complete powers for a peace"; declared that "our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace; shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood"; and urged Lincoln to make a frank offer of peace (J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 1890, IX, 186). Lincoln shrewdly prevailed upon the reluctant Greeley to go to Niagara Falls to open the negotiations. Greeley exceeded his instructions, but found that the Confederates were without proper powers from their government and asked for further directions. When Lincoln thereupon closed the affair with the ultimatum that he would gladly consider any official proposition which embraced the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, Greeley sent him a reproachful letter, for he believed that the President should have left the door open (Greeley, The American Conflict: ... Its Causes, Incidents, and Results, II, 1866, p. 664). On August 9 he wrote Lincoln that if the "rebellion" could not be promptly crushed the nation faced "certain ruin," begging him to make a fresh peace effort, and making the astounding proposal that if peace could not be made, there be an armistice for one year, "each party to retain, unmolested, all it now holds," and the blockade of the South to be lifted (Nicolay and Hay, IX, 196-97). These and similar views, expressed publicly and privately, created a wide-spread feeling that Greeley's judgment and nerve were deplorably weak.

Greeley's radical political views extended to Reconstruction. Believing in full negro equality, he indorsed not only the Fourteenth but also the Fifteenth Amendment and favored the congressional policies. In 1866 he was again a lion of the state Republican convention, controlled by anti-Johnson radicals. But the intemperate zeal with which the Tribune supported Johnson's impeachment owed more to John Russell Young, the managing editor, than to Greeley, then absent on a final Western trip. Greeley was also liberal enough to favor general amnesty, and called, as in his fine speech at Richmond on May 14, 1867, for the erasure of all sectional antagonism. He seconded the movement this year for Jefferson Davis's release from Fortress Monroe, and on May 13 signed his bond in Richmond. Noisy attacks followed, thousands of subscribers to Greeley's two-volume compilation, The American Conflict, cancelled their orders, the weekly Tribune lost more than half its circulation, and an effort was made in the Union League Club to reprimand him. The Tribune rejoiced in Grant's election, and for two years supported him with uniform cordiality. But, because of his support of the one-term principle and for two other reasons, one rooted in disapproval of Grant's public policies and the other in New York state politics, Greeley steadily cooled toward Grant. As a leader of the Reuben E. Fenton wing in New York politics, he viewed with hostility the rise of the Conkling-Cornell machine under Grant's protection, and resented what he felt to be Grant's unfair apportionment of federal patronage. Conkling's defeat of the Greeley-Fenton group in the state convention of 1871 led to an open split. At the same time Greeley became convinced that the Grant administration was demoralized and corrupt, indifferent to civil-service reform, mistaken in its Santo-Dominican policy, and illiberal toward the South. On May 6, 1871, the Tribune expressed doubt of the wisdom of renominating Grant on September 15 declared flatly against renomination. When independent Republicans pressed the movement for a new party in the congressional session of 1871-72, Greeley encouraged them. He wrote a friend on March 13, 1872, that he would carry the fight against Grant to its bitter end, though "I know how many friends I shall alienate by it, and how it will injure the Tribune, of which so little is my own property that I hate to wreck it" (J. Benton, ed., Greeley on Lincoln, with Mr. Greeley's Letters to Charles A. Dana and a Lady Friend, 1893, p. 211). His career was approaching its tragic climax.

Before the Civil War the Tribune had been Horace Greeley; after the war there was no such close identity. The paper had become a great institution of which his control was but partial. Disbursements by 1871 exceeded a million dollars annually, the whole staff approached 500, and the stock was held by twenty proprietors (Greeley's anniversary article, Tribune, April 10, 1871). Both Greeley's influence and that of the Tribune diminished after the war; the rise of the Associated Press, the multiplication of good local newspapers, and the disappearance of the great slavery issue, reduced their power. Personal editorship was declining. But from time to time Greeley still wrote editorials with his old fire, in what E. L. Godkin called "an English style which, for vigor, terseness, clearness, and simplicity, has never been surpassed, except, perhaps, by Cobbett" (Rollo Ogden, Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 1907, I, 255).

As the Liberal Republican movement first developed, Greeley discouraged mention of his name for the presidency; but as the revolt spread and there seemed a likelihood of successful coalition with the Democrats, his lifelong desire for political advancement made him receptive. The reform element in the movement favored Charles Francis Adams or Lyman Trumbull; the politicians who were promoting a coalition favored David Davis or Greeley (A. K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, 1905, II, 334). When the convention met in Cincinnati on May 1, Greeley had astute supporters, notably Whitelaw Reid and William Dorsheimer, on the scene. The contest narrowed to a struggle between Adams and Greeley, the managers of the latter sprung an effective stampede, and to the consternation of Schurz and other reformers, Greeley was nominated, with B. Gratz Brown as associate. The convention refused to make either nomination unanimous and many delegates departed, feeling wit!) Samuel Bowles. that the ticket had been made by a combination of political idiots and political buccaneers (G. S. Merriam, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, 1885, II, 212). Greeley was indorsed by a dispirited Democratic national convention at Philadelphia in July and some state coalitions were effected, but many Democrats bolted because of his former abuse of the party. The low-tariff element represented by the Nation was disaffected, while Schurz joined Greeley only after a reproachful correspondence with him. In an exceptionally abusive campaign, Greeley was attacked as a traitor, a fool, an ignoramus, and a crank, and was pilloried in merciless cartoons by Nast and others; he took the assaults much to heart, saying later that he sometimes doubted whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary. In answer to the "bloody-shirt" argument, he brought forward as his chief issue a plea for the reconciliation of North and South by the removal of all political disabilities and the union of both sections for common reforms. In his letter of acceptance he eloquently expounded the idea that both sides were "eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm" (Tribune, May 22, 1872). Retiring from his editorship, he made an active speaking campaign in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, his addresses to the huge crowds being notable for their intellectual strength (James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, II, 1886, p. 534). The October elections made it clear that he could not be successful in November. Yet the magnitude of the defeat was a surprise. Greeley carried only six border and Southern states and received only 2,834,125 of the popular vote against 3,597,13; cast for Grant. Among the chief factors in this disaster were the elaborate Republican organization, the distrust of Greeley by most financial interests, the impossibility of reconciling many Democrats, and the wide popular feeling that his judgment of both men and policies was hopelessly weak. Yet his candidacy had results of permanent value in actually doing much to close the "bloody chasm."

The tragedy of Greeley's death immediately followed the election. After his exhausting campaign tour he had watched with little sleep by the bedside of his wife, who died October 30. He was profoundly hurt by the feeling that he was "the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office." The final stroke came when, on returning to the Tribune, he found that the reins there had passed firmly into the hands of Whitelaw Reid, who had no intention of surrendering them, and that he had practically though not nominally lost the editorship which had been his lifelong pride (Charles A. Daria, "The Last Blow," N. Y; Sun, November 30, 1872). His mind and body both broke, and he died insane on November 29. A shocked nation paid him in death the tribute he had never received while living. His funeral in New York on December 4 was attended by the President, Vice-President, cabinet members, governors of three states, and an unequaled concourse of spectators. His failings were forgotten, while the services he had done the republic as its greatest editor, perhaps its greatest popular educator, and certainly one of its greatest moral leaders, were universally recalled.

[Greeley wrote an autobiography, Recollections of a Busy Life (1868; new eds., 1873, 1930), which offers not only a narrative of the main facts in his car!!er, but also a frank revelation of the forces which influenced his tastes and thought, and which is admirable in its simplicity and concreteness. The best biographies are: W. A. Linn, Horace Greeley: Founder and Editor of the New York Tribune (1903); James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune (1855, 1869, 1872, etc.); and L. D. Ingersoll, The Life of Horace Greeley, Founder of the New York Tribune (1873). Some new facts are added in Don C. Seitz, Horace Greeley, Founder of the New York Tribune (1926). Among treatments from a special point of view are Chas. Southern, Horace Greeley and Other Pioneers of American Socialism (1892), and F. N. Zabriskie, Horace Greeley, the Editor (1890). An estimate of Greeley's place in the history of American thought may be found in Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, II, 1927, pp. 247-57. The recollections of associates may be found in C. T. Congdon, Reminiscences of a Journalist (1880); C. A. Dana, "Greeley as a Journalist," in E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson, A Library of Amer. Lit., VII (1889); and J.C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, and Publishers (1884). Lives of John Hay, C. A. Dana, and Whitelaw Reid, and E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919) should also be consulted. The state of New York published in 1915 the Proc. at the Unveiling of a Memorial to Horace Greeley at Chappaqua, New York, February 3, I9I4- The files of the New York Tribune are indispensable to a study of his life.]

A. N.



GRIMES, James Wilson, 1816-1872, statesman, lawyer. U.S. Senator, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Governor of Iowa, 1854-1858. Supported by Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. Elected as Republican Senator in 1859. Re-elected 1865. He upheld the inviolability of the Missouri Compromise; and in his inaugural address on December 9, 1854, made it plain that he would do everything in his power to combat the further spread of slavery.

(Appletons’, 1888, Vol. II, p. 767; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 630; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 617; Congressional Globe)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 767:

GRIMES, James Wilson, statesman, born in Deering, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, 20 October, 1816; died in Burlington, Iowa, 7 February, 1872. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1836, and in the same year went west and began to practise law in Burlington, Iowa, then in what was known as the " Black Hawk Purchase," in the territory of Michigan. From 4 July, 1836, till 12 June, 1838, it was part of Wisconsin territory, and in 1837-'8 Mr. Grimes was assistant librarian of the territorial library. After the formation of Iowa Territory he was a delegate to its assembly in 1838 and 1843, and in 1852, after its admission to the Union, was a member of the legislature. He was governor of the state in 1854-'8, having been elected by Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats, and while holding the office did much to foster Free-Soil sentiment in his state. On 28 August, 1856, he wrote an official letter to President Pierce protesting against the treatment of Iowa settlers in Kansas. He was elected to the U. S. Senate as a Republican in 1859, and re-elected in 1865. His first speech, delivered on 30 January, 1860, was a reply to Senator Robert Toombs, who had accused Iowa of passing laws in violation of the rights of sister states, and after this he spoke frequently, and was known as a hard-working member of the Senate. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Peace Convention. He was a member of the committee on naval affairs from 24 January, 1861, till the end of his service, and was its chairman from December, 1864. He strongly advocated the building of iron-clads, and the abandonment of stone fortifications for harbor defence. Mr. Grimes was noted for his independence of character, which frequently brought him into conflict with his party associates in the Senate. Thus, although he favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, he considered President Lincoln's enlargement of the regular army in 1861 a dangerous precedent, and later he opposed a high protective tariff. In the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Mr. Grimes was one of the few Republican Senators who voted "not guilty," and this act brought upon him a storm of condemnation which lasted but a short time, owing to the evident fact that his vote had been strictly in accordance with what he considered his duty. Mr. Grimes had a stroke of paralysis in 1869, and in April of that year went abroad, resigning his seat in the Senate on 6 December. He returned in September, 1871, apparently improved, but died soon afterward of heart disease. Mr. Grimes founded a professorship at Iowa College, at Grinnell, and gave money for scholarships there and at Dartmouth, receiving the degree of LL. D. from both colleges. He also established a free public library in Burlington, Iowa. Sec " Life of James W. Grimes," by William Salter (New York, 1876). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, pp. 767.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 1, p. 630:

GRIMES, JAMES WILSON (October 20, 1816- February 7, 1872), lawyer, legislator, governor of Iowa, and United States senator, was born at Deering, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, the youngest of eight children. His parents, John and Elizabeth (Wilson) Grimes, were intelligent, independent farmers of Scotch-Irish stock. He entered Dartmouth College in August 1832, at the age of sixteen, but left at the close of the first term of his junior year, in February 1835. In 1845 he was awarded the degree of A.B. as of the class of 1836. After leaving college, he read law in the office of James Walker at Peterborough, New Hampshire, but shortly set forth to seek his fortune in the West. On May 15, 1836, he became a resident of Burlington, Iowa. Here he entered the profession of the law at the age of nineteen and soon became active in public life. In September of that year he acted as secretary of the commission which made two important treaties witl1 the Sac and Fox Indians. The following year he was appointed city solicitor. Elected in 1838 to the first Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa, he served as chairman of the committee on judiciary. He served again in 1843 as a member of the sixth Legislative Assembly, and in 1852 as a member of the fourth General Assembly of the state, where he was a leader in the promotion of railroads. At this time he was listed as a farmer, being interested in stock-breeding and agriculture. He was a charter member of the Southern Iowa Horticultural Society, and for a time served as editor on the staff of the Iowa Farmer and Horticulturist. On November 9, 1846, he had married Elizabeth Sarah Nealley. In the practise of law he was associated with Henry W. Starr.

Grimes was a man of commanding presence. "Careless of appearance, and somewhat rough and ungainly in early life, he grew with years in suavity, and grace, and dignity of bearing." Always, "he abhorred pretension and indirection" (Salter, post, p. 390). He had been reared a Whig and later adhered to that party both from preference and from conviction. Nominated for the office of governor by the Whigs, he was elected on August 3, 1854, after an energetic and fatiguing campaign. He stood for the revision of the state constitution and the establishment of banks and advocated better schools, internal improvements, and the enactment of homestead laws which would give to foreign-born settlers the same rights as were granted to native-born. He upheld the inviolability of the Missouri Compromise; and in his inaugural address on December 9, 1854, made it plain that he would do everything in his power to combat the further spread of slavery. Placing "business above politics, and the state above his party," Grimes, with a sense of institutional values, helped to remake Iowa. While he was in office the constitution of the state was revised and the capital removed from Iowa City to Des Moines; the State University was located permanently at Iowa City; schools free to all children were placed on a public-tax basis; a prohibitory liquor law was enacted; a State Historical Society was established; and institutions were created for the care of the insane, the deaf and dumb, and the blind. By the year 1856 he regarded the old parties and old issues as dead; and in that year spoke with force and deep conviction in behalf of the new Republican party, declaring that the great issue before the country was the extension or non-extension of slavery into the territories. It has been said that he, more than any one else, "made Iowa Republican, and allied it with the loyal States" (Salte, post, p. II6).

On March 4, 1859, he first took his seat in the United States Senate. He was appointed to the committee on pensions and private land claims; and on January 24, 1861, became a member of the committee on naval affairs, of which he was chairman from December 8, 1864, until the end of his senatorial career. He was instrumental in keeping the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was one of the first to recognize the necessity of an adequate fleet and the advantages of iron-clad ships. He was also chairman of the committee on the District of Columbia; and in the latter part of his senatorial career served on the committees on patents and the Patent Office, public buildings and grounds, and appropriations. He was associated with a group of men who during the Civil War created a detective service to sift out disloyal persons in the public service and elsewhere.

During the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868, Grimes displayed an integrity which cost him his political power and probably hastened his death. Though he considered many of the President's acts as highly deplorable, he did not believe that they constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors" and he seriously doubted the wisdom of a policy of impeachment. The strain of the trial brought on a stroke of paralysis, and when the time came for voting on the impeachment he had to be carried into the Senate chamber. He voted "Not guilty," while James Harlan [1820-1899, q.v.], the other senator from Iowa, voted "Guilty." One ballot the other way would have given a two-thirds majority, and the President would have been retired from office. A storm of political abuse broke upon Grimes; even the town of Burlington viewed his conduct with disfavor.

He returned to Congress when it reassembled in December 1868, but his spirit and strength were gone. In April 1869 he was ordered to Europe for a rest. There he suffered another stroke, and on August 11, sent to the governor of Iowa his resignation as senator, to take effect December 6. When he returned to America in September 1871, he found public sentiment once more in his favor. He died a few months later at his home in Burlington.

[B. F. Shambaugh, The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of Iowa (7 volumes, 1903-05). II, 3-112; collection of pamphlets from Grimes's library, in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; Wm. Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes (1876); Eli C. Christoferson, "The Life of James W. Grimes," MS. in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa; G. T. Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College (1867); D. E. Clark, History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa (1912); Sioux City Daily Journal, February 9, 1872.

J B.F.S.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.